


Awoke

by Roodoo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Drama, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:45:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roodoo/pseuds/Roodoo
Summary: "Here it was: the moment I’d been waiting for. All the answers to all the questions I’d been asking myself these past forty-eight hours. But did I really want them?There was no going back.I took a deep breath in, let it out, and then finally asked it.“Was it real for you?”What if everything you knew was wrong?Years after the second nuclear blasts, Earth has become an apocalyptic haven for the surviving members of the Ark. It begins to seem as if humanity is starting new again, but when Clarke's world starts falling away from her there's only one person who can help her pull the pieces together again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Additional summany - Written after season 4, the story takes place after the crew who escaped Primfiya comes back to Earth and touches on the political issues involved with trying to harmonize the Grounders, prisoners, and the Arkadians. During the chaos, Clarke's life is turned completely upside down, forcing her to rethink everything she knows. Heavy Bellamy/Clarke and light Clarke/Lexa, and a smattering of other couples from the show.
> 
> Unsatisfied with the long hiatus after season 4, I wrote a little something up to keep me sane. I was going to keep it to myself, but after watching season 5's premier, and still craving answers, I thought someone else might benefit from my wandering thoughts.  
> This is my first work of (fan)fiction I've posted, and I'm sure it needs work.  
> Things to be wary of: this fic includes cursing, sexual scenes, non-con, and intense depression.  
> I obviously don't own The 100 and am not affiliated with the show or books in any way. Just a fan who likes to write.  
> I've got about half the story already written, and I'll be posting chapters on a regular basis. I'm not sure what that will be yet. It'll be a fun surprise for us all!  
> Do I need to add anything?  
> Enjoy.

### Chapter 1

 

I never thought I’d be standing _here_ , amongst this vast display of Grounders and Arkadians, watching as developing lands built themselves upon a barren wasteland of rock and ash and death.

_I don’t want us to survive. I want us to live._

My gut twisted, the faint memory of a friend long passed written behind my eyes, and I swallowed hard.  It had been eight years since I first laid eyes upon this land, thrust into spiraling contrast of green and gray, took my first steps off the dropship and into the twigs and grass and dirt and smelled the smells and heard the sounds of a natural human. I breathed deep and held it in. Let it out. I was finally free.

A dark skinned man with dull red paint streaking his face approached.

_Lincoln?_

But I knew it wasn’t. The name Nahlo came to me, and I nodded to him. My thoughts had made a habit of that lately, tossing the dead around inside. Reliving experiences long lost. He reached his arm out and I took it into mine.

“ _The mill will be up in a matter of days,”_ he said in Trigedasleng. “ _We are running low on wood planks, but if we take half of the farmers and put them to lumber, we should have it up by tonight.”_ I contemplated his suggestion, scanning my eyes towards the farmlands east of the Shenandoah River. Over forty people began reaping the land before sunrise that morning, and had yet to stop despite the sun’s light nearing the top of the mountain’s edge.

“ _Are the crops planted?”_ I ask, knowing well that they were a long way from being finished. Nahlo’s eyes reached mine, and he didn’t respond. His silence was answer enough, and I sighed deeply.

“We can’t take that many from farming when we are running so short on food.” I said in English. He nodded, but offered no other suggestion. I shuffled my feet a bit in the rocks, kicking a small one off the hillside and watched it fly silently down the cliff side, towards the river’s edge. It ended its journey when it hit the side of a muddy brown boot a hundred yards down, the wearer oblivious as he shouted commands around the half built watermill. I looked towards the trajectory of the shouting, and saw John Murphy flipping him off under the heavy pile of planks strapped to his and Nathan Miller’s shoulders, which in turn only lead to more useless bellowing from the boot’s wearer. I only had a moment to wonder how long before the planks would be discarded before they fell off his shoulders and Murphy began shouting back full force.  

I put my fingers to my lips and whistled, gaining the attention of most of the mill workers but none from the two men on the verge of an all out brawl.

I shook my head, “Take whatever ten strongest men from farming for the rest of the night.”

He started to argue, and I stopped him short. “Have them tomorrow as well if you must, but if you need them any longer than that we will need to increase our hunter’s gains to feed everyone in the next coming weeks,” I was already making my way down the hillside before he could respond.

“ _Bilaik ste hogeda,”_ I dismissed. “ _Bants.”_

I didn’t stop to see if the Grounder representative was satisfied with my decision. I knew that if I let this escalate between the two then I would never get it to stop, and our entire progress here would be shunted. I had doubts about putting the two together originally, but when it came down to it they were two of the strongest men in our _kru_ , and had they gotten along it would have decreased the building time by two-fold. But, instead of plans going the way I’d intended, they started fights more often than not, and once started nobody could stop them.

Once I finally reached them, their boots were touching and noses were inches apart. It was almost comical how red their faces had turned, and I had to pinch the bridge of my nose to keep my headache at bay once I got in proximity of the sound of them. The sheer decibel was impressive, really, and I wasn’t sure which was worse - his booming bass, or Murphy’s shrieks.

“ _Nou!”_ I shouted. I suppose I had expected the ignorance from Murphy, but was irritated instantly when my command fell on both of their ears deaf.

“You never listen to a fucking word I say. Why should I even be letting you work on the most important job when I know you’re just going to fu-”

“Hey!” I called in English, grabbing his wrist and yanking it away from Murphy.

“What!” he screamed in my face, black curls bouncing comically around his reddened temple. I gave him a pointed look, and he relaxed his fist immediately when he saw who had grabbed him. I loosened my grip on his wrist, but didn’t let go. I ignored the searing heat in my fingertips. He pretended like he didn’t notice I still held his wrist, and turned back to Murphy.

“If you were supposed to be in charge, then you would have been made the task leader. It’s not like I’m the fucking President, I just know which pieces of wood go where. We need to get this done by nightfall and we’re so much further behind than I had expected. Please, just do your job and I won’t say another damn word to you. Deal?” He held out his other hand, and to my surprise Murphy took it and shook. I noticed that he wasn’t making eye contact, but instead looking back in the hillside where Emori was hauling dual buckets of water towards the boiling station. I held my smile in, and watched as he silently found his way back to Miller and resumed his task.

I turned away from where Murphy had stood, “It’s funny how much she’s changed him. To think, you tried to hang him once.”

He scoffed, “I successfully hung him, thanks very much. He just doesn’t die. I still think we’d have been better off. But, yeah. He’s certainly easier to talk down now than he was. Still an ass hole, though.” He said, turning toward me.

I grinned sarcastically at his remark, “Easier to talk down than you, that’s for sure.” He turned his head, and I didn’t remark on his smile I’d caught.

My hand’s grip on his wrist had loosened and was hanging onto the base of his thumb, dangerously close to territories we’d only explored late at night in dimly lit tents in Arkadia’s ruined rubble. He looked at my hand, and hesitated. His fingers slipped into mine for only a second before we heard feet approaching. A cleared throat was heard, and he dropped my fingers like hot coals before turning to see our disruptor.

“Clarke, Bellamy,” I turned toward Marcus Kane’s voice as he approached us. I nodded my greeting and Bellamy responded with Kane’s name.

“I’ve just gotten word that we’re decreasing our farming output to increase our lumber supply. Is this accurate?” Nahlo had made quick work of disobeying me, knowing that Kane was the best person to go to if he wanted change without my consent.

Bellamy frowned, “That sounds like a good idea to me, _Chancellor._ ” He had begun using the title sarcastically towards the three previous Chancellors ever since I had been elected _Heda gon Wonkru_ . Commander of all people. I was still less than happy with the decision to put me in charge, but we had put it to vote and it was unanimous. I had though Kane or my Mother, or even Octavia, would have been a much smarter, more well-represented choice as Heda since they had spent almost seven years together beneath Polis becoming _Wonkru_ as I’d lived above ground with only myself, Madi, and later on with Bellamy’s crew.

“I agree,” Kane responded, “ However, if we have any hopes of getting the watermill working by the time the rains come then we will need all the manpower we can get.”

I hesitated, looking towards Bellamy for any input. He shrugged, and I rolled my eyes.

“We are going to need all the crops we can get, and they will be that much harder to grow if they’re not in the ground before the rains. The longer we spend in the sun, the worse the radiation burns are getting, and we need crops to make the medicine for it. Without medicine for the burns, we don’t have men to plant the food, and without food to feed ourselves, we have only a group of underfed people who don’t have the strength to put the mill together.” I hadn’t had a plan when I started my sentence, but by the end of it I seemed to have Kane, Bellamy, and myself convinced my plan was decent. That’s how it had gone this entire time, with my plans being constructed halfway through my sentences and people taking it as law. The only person that seemed to see through my flaws was Bellamy, but never once did he argue them publically, only when we were in private. I could never thank him enough for that. I knew that he didn’t always agree with me, but what I needed wasn’t someone to butt heads with me in front of the citizens of Wonkru, but instead a level head to argue it in private when we’ve had time to think on it. Something happened in our time apart that changed him, but Bellamy would never tell me what. Apart from his spats with Murphy, he had become humbled, calm. Maybe it was just the years, maturity and time playing its role on his mind, but whatever it was I was grateful for it. My time as _Wanheda_ had also changed me into another person, and my time in solitude had turned me into a leader. A true leader of the people. Of all people, not just the citizens of the Ark, or of the Grounders, or the remaining Elegian prisoners.

It was a long while before Kane responded, and when he did a nod was all I received. “I’ll give the order. But Clarke,” he paused, “perhaps this would be best sorted in a gathering of the representatives. Just a thought,” he said before taking his leave. I thought on it for a long time, Bellamy at my right in silence, before deciding to continue with the plan I’d formed. Good leaders backed up their claims, they didn’t fumble and change their minds. That made them seem weak, and weakness - even in this post-apocalyptic wasteland harmony - was intolerable, and unacceptable. At least, that’s how the people of Wonkru saw it, and who was I to try to change their ways when their ways were keeping us alive for the time being.

I turned to Bellamy and we exchanged a silent dismissal. It would be time for the day’s meal soon, and I had much to do before I could take leisure. My stomach churned hard as the hunger hit me like a brick wall. By sundown, most of the people, including myself, had drained themselves of the energy from the previous night’s meal. We were rationed so thin we were on a one-meal-a-day regime, and it was sucking the life out of the workers. All the more reason to continue with the plan I’d laid out, getting the crops planted and growing was the first priority and the pit in my gut reminded me every second.

By the time the sun had set completely, most everyone had exhausted to their tents and prepared for meal time. I made my way towards the kitchens, the largest and most sturdy tent built within the main gates, towering over the smaller sleeping and washing tents. The kitchen workers had begun lighting the lamps, and I grabbed a box of matches to help. As I lit the oil lanterns I noticed that above them had already been strung several of the long strips of hanging lightbulbs, the ends plugged into nowhere. I smiled. Even though we had yet to be successful in our attempts at electricity, everyone was hopeful and ready. Raven must have put them up to this, just as she had been installing the emergency lighting around the gate’s main entrances. Any day now, I imagined, but even once the mill was completely built there was still the task of hooking the generators up and wiring them into the main conduits. We were days away from finishing, and I could only hope we got it done before the flooding began. It’s hard to build when the ground is slick with mud, and people still had the fears of black rain in the back of their minds, even though we hadn’t had a harmful rain in over a year. I didn’t blame them, though, as we had run through our stock of medications from the Ark months ago, and everyone was still suffering from atmospheric radiation burns on a daily basis. Madi and I were the only two who weren’t part of the daily regime of peeling our clothing from our skins and washing our singed flesh before bed. People waited desperately for the mill to generate power for more than just lighting our town. On one of the more recent scavenging trips a group came back with four industrial sized air conditioners. The cooling elements had long rusted away, but the HEPA and charcoal air filters remained intact and I had hopes they would be useful in cleaning the air in the tents at night so we could have a well-needed break from the airborne radiation. I sent them to work sealing the tents as well as possible immediately, using plastic tarps we’d scavenged a while back and caulking the edges to seal it tight. I may have jumped the gun a bit, as the mill was weeks away from completion at the time, and changing out the canvas barriers for plastic ones had not only been time-consuming, but made the insides of our tents unbearably hot and muggy during the warm September nights. Nobody complained yet, however, as the prospect of a filtered home seemed to keep their angry thoughts at bay.  

I lifted the tarp of the living quarters main entrance, and found my way to the end where my tent resided, directly across from Bellamy and Octavia’s. I originally shared my quarters with my mother, but she spent most of her nights in Kane’s tent so I had mine to myself. I didn’t spend much time in my own tent, anyways, as Octavia was gone on a hunting raid for the last few weeks and would be gone until the end of the month. I pulled my towel off the rack next to Bellamy’s damp one and made my way outside and into an empty shower stall, smiling a greeting to Harper in the next stall over before releasing the tab holding the water in. I had gotten used to the exposure of the public showers quickly, as had most Arkadian’s, because the relief of the water against our singed flesh was more than blissful. I grabbed the communal goat’s milk and oatmeal soap bar and rubbed it in my hands until the suds flowed over my fingers and onto the ground. I noticed a grounder man staring at me as I washed the soap off my reddened skin and ignored it as best I could, reminding myself that we were not raised the same. Grounders were so much more primitive, but learning their ways and having them learn our ways had the best possible outcome for harmony among the people. So, if I had to ignore a couple wandering eyes to keep the peace, then I would do so in silence.

“Hey!” the shout jostled my eyes open, the proximity jarring me enough to drop the bar into the gravel at my feet. “Look at anything else. Now.” Bellamy had different ideals than I, and I shook my head lightly as I watched the man retreat angrily into the dining tent. He stood a careful few feet away from my stall, enough that I was the obvious point of discussion but far enough that I was kept decent to his eyes.

“Only level ground will bring us peace, Bellamy. I can take a few men staring at me if it keeps the peace. Relax.” I tried to hide my grin, but it was a failed attempt. As unnecessary as I had said it was, there was nothing quite like someone defending your honor, especially when they were clean, shaven, and wearing only cargo pants and boots. I crossed my arms and leaned them against the edge of the stall so he could move closer safely.

“Just because we’re ‘equal’ now doesn’t mean we get to act like neanderthals. The criminals do a well enough job of that.” I cringed at his statement.

“We were criminals when we came here, too, Bell.” He scoffed.

“Yeah, because ‘murder’ and ‘petty theft’ are the same thing. If you keep letting people get away with everything just because it’s ‘their way’ then soon enough they’ll start tying us up to poles and cutting us to death. Not to mention raping the women. You may be Wanheda, but if you let men stare at you long enough they’ll start thinking of ways to take it further. Trust me. Men are disgusting. You have to keep them in line.”

“You’re a man,” I stated.

He scoffed, “And you keep me in line. Plus, I was raised to respect women. Hard not to when you grow up in a female-dominated household.” He sighed and stepped closer, crossing his arms. “I’m just saying. Not all the women here can defend themselves, and we need to set up _some_ ground rules the Grounders oppose. Just letting them do whatever they want all the time is not ‘peace and harmony’. It’s letting them live however they want, and feeding them and housing them for it.”

“It’s not that simple,” I say. “Calm down, Bellamy. You’re just worked up because that guy was watching us. He left, and look around you. Nobody else is staring at us. And yesterday, nobody stared at us. The Grounders aren’t plotting the pillaging of our village, it was just one pervert who looked at us too long.” I reached out and touched his shoulder. “Unless it happens again, let it go. Okay?” He looked away and nodded, and I noticed his face was red again, but his anger had subsided. I realized he was close enough to my naked body to touch me, and my cheeks flushed. I pulled my hand back behind the shower wall when I saw Harper staring at us from the corner of my eye.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” he said curtly as he took off towards the kitchen tent, throwing the tarp door out of the way and stomping over the threshold. I backed away from the wall and under the water stream again, still the center of Harper’s attention.

“Cornbread and venison tonight,” I said, and she chuckled to herself. Feeling like I’d been caught in some rendezvous, I poured the cold water over my face until I forgot everything but the feeling of my hands against my clean skin. The showers were a luxury that not everyone agreed upon, and I had my water off and was drying myself before Harper was finished cleaning her hair. I had originally said I would use the bathing room with the grounders to keep the peace, as they thought the showers were a waste of running water. But I found out quickly that the act was not enough to satiate their anger over the showers, and there was no point in denying myself the luxury for no reason. So, as a compromise, I just took dreadfully short showers and the grounders seemed to lose their steam over it after a while.

I walked back to my tent in my towel and tried to ignore the staring. It was worth it to not have to put my dirty clothes back on, and when I got back to my tent I hung my wet towel next to Bellamy's. The sealed room became increasingly humid the longer I stayed inside it with wet towels and damp hair, so I threw on my sleeping clothes and hurried out into the dining hall. I reached our usual table in the tent and reached behind us to lift the tarp and uncover the screened window. The breeze was a relief, and I sat in my spot on the bench between Echo and Bellamy.

“Hey,” she smiled in greeting, and I countered with a hello. Bellamy was staring hard at his food, and I ignored him. I expected him to still be bitter about our argument earlier, but there was a plate of food ready in front of me nonetheless. I offered him a thanks, and he shrugged. I rolled my eyes.

“How was your guy’s day?” I asked, half expecting them to be so consumed with their meal I get no response. Echo said “Fine,” through a mouthful of food, and a few others nodded, but for the most part I got my expected response. Bellamy ignored me, Miller was silent, and Harper was still staring at me and Bellamy.

I looked pointedly at him and he looked at anything else.

“Can we not fight tonight?” I whispered to him, and he shook his head.

“Just eat your food, _Heda._ ” The title was dripping with sarcasm, but he gave a small grin with it. I wondered for a moment if he was still mad, until I felt his hand graze my knee underneath the table and I looked back at my food abruptly. He squeezed it and I tensed. He grinned into his food in response, and I resumed eating as best I could.

Harper was still staring at us. I locked eyes with her, and she gave me a cheesy smile. I kept my attention on my food for the rest of the meal.

Bellamy had left for bed almost an hour before I did, and I spent most of the night sitting by the embers in the outside fire pit sipping moonshine and laughing as Monty told scary stories to Harper’s dismay. Raven laughed at all the scary parts, and I cringed when he started on a loud tangent. The silence of nighttime was my favorite part of Earth most days. When everyone was finally sick of the stories and exhausted from the day’s work, we sat in blissful silence and listened to the wind in the trees and the quiet crashing of the falls near the unfinished mill.

Harper had fallen asleep laying in Monty’s lap, and Emori and Murphy sat with their hands entwined just outside of the circle of the firelight. Raven massaged her leg as she did nightly, adjusting the clips of the brace idly. Miller and Bryan sat a few feet away from me, checking Miller’s arm for the progress my mother’s new medicine had made against the burns he’d gotten up and down his right wrist. I watched unsettled as they concluded it hadn’t healed much in the few days since she’d applied it, and it didn’t look much better from where I sat, either.

“Can I see?” I asked quietly, and Miller offered his arm to me. If I recalled correctly, the original wound was from exposure to unfiltered water splashing from the edge of the falls while they constructed the mill. He rinsed it in the correct amount of time, but the sun exposure seemed to have halted any healing process it had started on its own. My mother had begun an algae-based regime for those with water-induced radiation burns, but it didn’t seem to have the effect she had hoped for.

“Give it more time,” I advised, but even I had little hope it would make any difference. It may have been habitable when they came crashing back to Earth last year, but it was only to a degree. The radiation still poisoned the water, and while the air was breathable now I was unsure of its long-term effects. Of course, when Madi and I woke up in the mornings our skin was freshly healed and our lungs felt clear. The story was different for those who didn’t have nightblood. Respiratory infections secondary to the radiation in the air were common, and most nights I listened to the raspy breathing of the young and elderly trying desperately to get good, deep breaths in where the air was less contaminated. I healed quicker every day, and I wondered if it was possible to build up a resistance to the radiation in the air. I still burned in the water and my skin singed in the direct sunlight, but I healed up pretty quickly. The other reason I loved nights so much was being able to see my friends again - in the literal sense of the word. During the days it’d been made mandatory to wear clothing covering every possible part of the body, even on the days that reached near a hundred and ten degrees, which had been the last several weeks consistently. The canvas taken from the sleeping tents was redistributed to shade every possible inch of the compound from the light of the sun, and when at all possible we were to stay underneath them.

Bellamy refused, of course, to wear ‘full body armor’ during the hottest days, which in turn led to severe radiation burns around his neck and hands where the exposure was the worst. I wasn’t sure if it was his machismo that made him do it, the testosterone in him, or just plain stubbornness, but if I asked nicely he would usually oblige me to at least put his hands in his pockets when he wasn’t using them. It’s hard to lead the entire human race when your hands have burned off, I insisted. That seemed to spike his ego enough to get him to cooperate.

I couldn't remember if Miller had replied or not, but I could recall a faint whispering in my ear, the world suddenly dark. I felt movement and my eyes opened for a moment, my lids a thousand pounds and begging to close. A dry shirt, and above that the dark silhouette of a face, damp hair stuck to his cheekbones. I grasped the fabric under my fingertips and the world was dark again.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: none

I awoke with a start, gasping loudly and flying up into a seated position. It was pitch black, the air heavy and hot, my breaths coming in short. I clawed at my throat, fearing the worst had finally happened.  _They turned off the oxygen!_ I panicked, throwing the sheet off my body and trying to stand. An arm was on my wrist, holding me down, which worsened my panicked state.

“Clarke-” my name, mumbled from sleepy lips. My eyes adjusted and I could see the outline of who was holding me down. I froze and tried to sort through the jumbling thoughts in my brain. “Clarke, stop. It’s fine. Go back to sleep.” _Bellamy_ , the name entered my frontal lobe, initiating a decrease in my heart rate. I sighed heavily, running a hand through my damp hair.

Bellamy sat up in bed when I didn’t settle down, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Sorry…” I said weakly, and he shook his head. He stretched his back for a moment before pressing down on my shoulders, guiding me back into a lying position. I stared at the roof, stiff and stock straight as I waited for the panic to settle and leave.

“I should have woken you up before bringing you to bed. I didn’t think about your night terrors.” The apologetic tone in his voice was distracting enough to calm me the rest of the way, and I blushed as the word _bed_ played through my head in his voice. I thought about asking if anyone saw him carry me in here, but didn’t want to offend him. The subject was a tricky one to start with, and only had been made worse when the Grounders had accused nepotism of me when I put Bellamy in charge of the watermill project. That had halted any budding feelings immediately, and our newfound relationship had been put on hold - or what there had been of it, anyways.

I settled in, a wave of calm washing over me as reality rinsed my thoughts clean. “Thanks for bringing me in. Saved me from a sore neck. Can’t save me from a hangover though,” I tried to joke, but I could feel the effects of the alcohol still swimming around in my head.

“How much did you drink?” his words slurred a bit, sleep trying desperately to claim him again.

“I didn’t think much. I was just so tired…” _Not anymore,_ I thought. When my eyes finally adjusted to the dark, I could see his were closed. The gripping feeling of panic started to grow again without his distraction, and I rolled over on my side to ride it out silently.

My hands had just began shaking when I felt his arm wrap around my shoulder, pulling me back into a tight embrace, his stomach warm and flush with the small of my back, his knee sneaking underneath my thigh. As if a switch was flipped, my racing heart slowed, my hands stopped shaking, and I fell into an empty, dreamless sleep.

When I woke I was still tangled up with Bellamy, my head on his chest and his arms wrapped around my back, legs hanging carelessly over each other. The heat was worse today, scorching through the tent walls already as the sun was rising. I looked up at his face, and my heart twinged. He was so peaceful, calm and bliss washing away his harsher features, the face he gives to the rest of the world.

I touched his neck, the skin raised and red under my fingers, and cringed. Somehow I was going to have to convince him to cover the delicate flesh before he started developing melanomas or other cancers. Burned skin is one thing to heal, but cancer… I looked away.

I rolled onto my back to catch my breath, the heat of the tent suffocating. A few minutes passed before I felt Bellamy’s movement beside me, and I turned my head to see him lift up onto his side.

“Morning,” I said. He didn’t respond as he reached over me to grab a bottle of distilled water, chugging down half of it before offering it to me. I took a few sips, knowing I had my own bottles in my tent and not wanting to drain his. He rolled his eyes and took the bottle back from me, pouring some out into his hands and splashing it over his face and neck before offering it to me again with a raised eyebrow.

“A man of few words,” I chuckled, taking the bottle again and copying him, the cool water against my skin euphoric.

He took it from me when it was empty and tossed it across the tent. “Not everything needs to be said.” His statement made me shiver, and when I caught his eye, he was looking at me with such intensity I had to look away.

* * *

In its current state, the mill was certainly lacking. Stability, longevity, durability - you name it. It was unfinished, underplanned, and starting to show as they days went by at what seemed like a complete standstill. We were no closer to being finished than we were two days ago, and setback after setback had my skin crawling. I walked purposefully along the hillside overlooking the valley below, the sun beating down on the back of my cloth wrap adorning my neck and head, sweat dripping down onto the back of my shirt. I feared Nahlo had been right, and we should have dispersed the workers more heavily toward the mill construction as the rains drew nearer. The thick humidity clawed at my skin through my clothes, and I wondered if my predictions were dangerously far off. The sky was a bright, blinding blue, but I knew the dark clouds were around the corner, looming beyond the horizon, ready to drown our crops and wash away the bits of mill we’d put together haphazardly.

I caught Kane’s eye as he pulled his cap off and wiped his forehead, nodding in acknowledgement. He gave a slight wave, and I jogged down the wood and dirt stairs towards him.

“ _Heda._ Good afternoon,” Kane said, replacing his hat and offering his hand.

I took it and shook firmly, “Kane.” I sighed. “This is progressing much slower than I’d anticipated. What’s the set back?” I asked.

Kane gestured toward the mill, “I’m sure your supervisor has more intel that I could give.”

“Yes but… Bellamy only sees the surface problems. Who’s slacking, who’s the weakest link, who’s an idiot,” Kane chuckled at my candor. “While those aspects are important… I need to know the root of the problem. Why are they all so… unmotivated?” Kane nodded.

“Well, the tents have become a problem. You know as well as I that they are too hot and there’s no ventilation. Food is scarce, like you’d mentioned before, but not necessarily just our vegetables, but our meats. The population of deer has dwindled drastically since we’ve constructed our camp on a more permanent level, and the hunters are gone longer and longer. They’re hungry and tired, Clarke.” I nodded, surveying the landscape with greater detail than before. I noticed it, the hollow cheekbones, the circles under their eyes. People with their hands on their knees, catching their breaths in the burning sunlight. Even Bellamy, shouting orders from the platform at the base of the mill, looked exhausted. I looked to my feet, thinking hard on what the best next move would be. How to keep these people who’ve entrusted me with their lives from disintegrating into ash and bones like their ancestors before them.

“Hey, you two,” I smiled at my mother’s voice, turning around as she stepped up to Kane and I.

“Hi, mom,” I replied, and watched her lean into Kane and grab a quick kiss. I looked away, pretending to look back towards the mill, my father’s face sharp in my memory.

“How’s the project going?” I asked, watching a Grounder and a Prisoner help a smaller Arcadian girl pick up her fallen water buckets near the riverbed. I worried about her exposure to the splashing water, but smiled at the teamwork between the three very different people.

My mother sighed, “Not well. I don’t see much improvement in the few subjects I’ve treated for sun-exposure inflicted wounds. The medications we had back on the Ark just… far surpass anything I can make on the ground without a laboratory and real trials.”

I shook my head again, thinking of the Grounder we’d used as a test subject years ago when we’d first tried to mutate human blood into radiation-resistant nightblood. We’d taken the trip out to Becca’s lab a few times with Madi and a couple others in tow, but nothing had come from her research yet. Madi could only give so much blood, and I was not a natural night-blood, so without a way to bring ourselves into space again, and with Primfiya destroying the data stored in external computer systems outside of the lab, we’d run short on luck.

“We can plan another trip to the Lab if you need, but it has to wait until we finish the mill,” I offered. “Kane and I were just discussing how to improve work ethic in the citizens. I know they’re hungry and tired I just… I don’t know how to improve the situation,” I said, defeated.

She nodded, “Well, Clarke, you’re tired and hungry right alongside them. Keeping yourself equal to your citizens may keep them loyal to you for now, but without a solid plan and an improved quality of life, they’re going to start questioning your authority. You need to take care of yourself, mind and body, to continue leading them successfully.” Her words made sense, but I just didn’t see how improving my quality of life would change theirs.

“Would you be saying this if I wasn’t your daughter?” I asked, scrutinizing.

“Absolutely. And, on the Ark, I told Thelonius the same things. To lead, we must be followed. For them to follow, you must look like you can lead. Right now, honey, you don’t look like you’re up for much leading. If anything, you look like you’re about to fall on your face.”

She was right, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. While I may have had better radiation resistance than most others, I was still starving, tired, and hungover. I cursed, knowing I was walking down the path to failure at an alarming rate. Trying to satiate everyone’s need equally was not working, and if I was going to be successful I was going to have to change up my strategy.

“Blake!” I called down the hill, Bellamy looking up at me with curiosity. Clipping his radio to his belt, he hurried toward me. He wasn’t generally fond of the formal use of his last name, but he didn’t remark on it.

“Hi,” he said, giving a cursory glance to my mother and Kane. “What’s going on?”

“How are you guys doing?” I asked, ignoring the question.

He gave me a confused look before responding, “Uh, fine. I guess.” He frowned. “Who?”

“Your team,” I responded, putting my hands on my hips. “How are your men doing? Tired, hungry, what? Doing well? Working hard?”

“Uh…” he started again. “Yes, yes, no… and sort of?”

I stared blankly at him. “Bell…”

“Well, what? You want to know how they’re doing?” he asked sharply, “They feel like shit and their work ethic is worse. They’re tired and hungry, as we all are. As you are,” he added.

“I know,” I replied quietly. “I’m trying to figure out what to do.”

Bellamy pondered it for a moment before responding, “Well, if we want to get these generators up and running we’re going to need as much man power as we can get. We can’t work them any less, but the at rate we’re going they’re going to be running at 1% battery soon. We can try and pull from farming like you guys were talking about yesterday but…” he paused, “Honestly, without the people we sent out hunting, we’re looking at only a couple extra strong men. The rest are smaller women, kids, or injured. You’ve got this place divvied up with the best of all abilities where they need to go. We just need more time, and you that's the one thing you can’t control, Clarke, no matter how much you want to.” He was speaking gently by the end, but even though I know he didn’t mean to, his speech hit me right where it hurt. I was helpless against the elements again. I just had to hope the rains were further away than I’d thought, or that the hunting party cut its trip short.

I walked away from the group without saying another word. By the time I’d reached the front gate, Bellamy had caught up to me.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, _Wanheda_ , where do you think you’re going?” He grabbed my arm and turned me around. I yanked out of his grasp, put off by his sudden show of dominance.

“We’ve got to get food somehow, so I’m either coming back with a group of hunters… or a big, dead deer.” I said, grabbing the bow and arrow off the weapons rack it was shelved on.

“Clarke…” he sighed.

I gave him one last look before turning on my heel and walking toward the gate, determined.

I was almost to the treeline when a backpack landed in front of me, so close I had to skip over it so I didn’t fall. I turned and Bellamy was grinning at me, a pack slung over one shoulder and a rifle over the other. “Don’t forget your pack, _Heda._ ” He picked up the bag I was staring at and held it out to me. I snatched it before heading the opposite direction, through the tree line and into the forest. I heard his feet crunching in the dirt behind me.

It was almost an hour before either of us said a word, trudging along through the trees in tense silence, and Bellamy was the first to break it. “What are you so pissed about, Clarke?”

I slowed to a stop, breathing heavily as I set my pack down next to a tree and leaned against it.

Bellamy stood in front of me, waiting.

I grabbed a bottle of water from the pack, took a swig, and wiped my mouth before responding.

“I’m failing these people, Bell,” I started. “They’re hungry - I don’t have food for them. They’re hot - I don’t have shade for them. They’re tired - and I provided them with subpar living quarters that suffocate them on a nightly basis with no ventilation or filtration and the poor air quality is going to kill them all, soon, if the skin cancer doesn’t first.” I kept my eyes down, shame wavering my voice. “And that includes you, Bellamy. I can’t even keep the people I care about safe. I don’t know what to do.”

He centered himself in front of me so I couldn’t look anywhere else, and my breath caught at the look on his face.

He put his hands on my shoulders, keeping my eye contact, “You know why they chose you to lead them, Clarke?” he asked, and I swallowed, his hands moving down my arms.  

“Because you’re the only one who has the strength to do it.” I took a breath as he stared at me with a fierce look in his eyes. His hands moved onto my waist, down to my hips and pushed me firmly back into the tree.

“You are the only person with the guts,” he stepped closer, “the intelligence,” his hips were an inch from mine, “the strength...” he leaned in, and I could feel his breath on my neck, “and the body for it, because frankly you can’t lead the human race without an absolutely smoking ass,” he smirked, and I smacked his arm, the mood - and my dark demeanor - shattered by his raunchy comment. He laughed loudly, and hoisted me up by the rear onto the tree and pressed into me. I yelled out playfully in disagreement as he pinned me to the tree and I pretended to struggle, all the while my body responding no-so-playfully to his movements.

“Stop!” I laughed, wrenching my head up to try to get my face away from his, my cheeks burning red at his proximity.

“C’mon Clarke, you know you want it!” he yelled, digging his fingers into my ribs, tears streaming down my face as I laughed and tried to get away from his painful tickling.

“Stop, stop, Bellamy!” I yelled, and to my surprise he stopped his torture, a grin on his face as he held my wrists above my head. I tightened my legs around his waist involuntarily and he must have noticed because his smile fell, leaving an entirely different look on his face. My lips parted as we stared at each other, panting heavily, speechless. My hands trembled under his hold, and I know he felt it. His gaze dropped to my lips, and I felt myself lick them. He swallowed. My heart pounded. Aside from the nights we spent tangled together co-inhabiting his tent, this was the closest we’d been since…

A crack sounded loudly, shockingly close to our heads. _A gunshot!_ I realized.

“Fuck!” Bellamy yelled, dropping my wrists and spinning around, wildly grabbing for his rifle. I had barely gotten my arrow notched before I saw the rifle coming around the corner, aimed at Bellamy. Panicked, I pulled the arrow back and aimed, but suddenly Bellamy lowered his rifle and stood.

“Seriously?” He sounded irritated, but far more relaxed than I felt. I kept my arrow notched and aimed, until from behind the tree walked Octavia, grinning, rifle slung over her shoulder. I lowered my bow, sighing with relief.

Bellamy ran to her, pulling her into an embrace. I watched silently, looking around for the rest of the group. When they released, Bellamy smacked her shoulder. “Hey!” she cried out playfully, mock anger displayed on her face. “I just thought there were better places for you guys to bump uglies than in the middle of the forest, okay?” Her question what rhetorical, and I could see that Bellamy was a red as I was from the comment.

“We weren’t-”

“Yeah yeah, whatever, big brother,” she waved him off sarcastically, “And in broad daylight, too?” I quivered my arrow and returned my bow to my shoulder, looking at anything but the siblings.  

The rest of the group emerged from the trees, obviously annoyed at Octavia’s playful show. They greeted me appropriately, praises of _Heda_ and _Wanheda_ , before finishing their journey towards the front gates of the complex. My heart sped up at the sight of their kills slung over their shoulders. Deer, rabbits, fowl… I was elated. A young Grounder boy ran up to me with a string of several fish and held it out for me to see.

“For you, _Heda_!” He exclaimed, and I took the offering from him with a smile.

“I thank you, _goufa_ , for your offering will feed many hungry stomachs tonight.” He seemed pleased at my response, and ran full speed towards the main gate.

I turned to Octavia, who was still playfully shaming Bellamy for our little rendezvous.

“You’re home early,” I stated. She nodded, punching Bellamy in the shoulder before turning to me.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “We got a little held up when one of the Prisoner’s started a fight with Jaco, and we had to bring him home to tend to his wounds.” Octavia kept walking until she’d passed me, and I had to jog to catch up.

“And the prisoner?” I asked.

She turned and smirked, “Let’s just say his… _gonplei ste odon._ ”

I stopped abruptly, causing Bellamy to bump into me.

“This isn’t a game, Octavia. The Eligius are just as much our people as we were when we first came down.” I grabbed her arm to stop her, and she whipped around to look at me.

I straightened at her stern look, hesitating. “You may try to make them into us, but they will never be _us._ We’ve spent enough time and energy trying to make peace between everyone - at some point you need to realize some people were not meant to _integrate._ ” her voice was low, but the anger fumed off of her as she turned back around and stormed off into the camp.

I looked up into the trees, breathing deeply to quell my irritation at her attitude. Bellamy touched my wrist, and I looked at him.

“Ignore her. You know how she gets after these hunting trips. She always comes back… feral,” he chuckled. “She’ll be normal Octavia again after a shower and a hot meal.”

“What is normal Octavia?”

He laughed. “Good point.”

Since they’d brought back more than enough food to feed the camp for tonight, I decided to call off my impulsive hunting expedition. I was needed much more in the kitchen, skinning carcasses and gutting innards, to my discontent. I instructed Bellamy to return to the mill, and he left wordlessly.

Most of the women gathered in the kitchen when the hunters brought kills back to camp, and I pretended not to notice when people from the crop fields and the water station joined us as well. Everyone was excited to have real food for dinner and not left over rations or cornbread again.

When the meats were cooking and their skins were hanging to dry, I stood over a bowl filled with honey, eggs, oil, spices and a few other… unidentifiable ingredients, mixing with a wooden spoon until my arm went numb from the constant rotations. I brought the bowl over to the large grill, but it was snatched out of my hands before it could touch the counter.

“Hey!” I yelled, and started running towards the culprit, until I saw who it was.

I put my hands on my hips and shook my head, “Madi!” I warned. “Bring it back,” the girl had made it to the other side of the yard in no time, and I didn’t have the energy to chase her down.

She giggled, holding the bowl above her head. “What is this goo?” she asked, bringing the bowl down and looking into it quizzically.

“It’s marinade for the meat, Madi, now please give it back?” I shifted feet and wiped the sweat off my forehead, not feeling up to her games after the scorching day we’d had.

“Isn’t marinade supposed to go on meat before it’s cooked?” she asked as she walked the bowl back to me.

I took it from her and put it against a hip with one arm, hugging her shoulders with the other. “How do you know that?”  
She shrugged. “I know some stuff,” she said, looking up at me with a goofy smirk. I shook my head again, wondering how I managed to mother a bratty teenager _and_ run this town for the past year.

She looked around. “Where’s what’s his face?” She asked, scrunching her nose with distaste.

I rolled my eyes. “You know his name, Madi. Please, just call him by his name next time you see him? Or, maybe, say hi? Smile? Pretend you like him at the very least, for my sake?” Our reunion with those who’d been on what was left of the Ark had been thrilling for Madi at first, until she realized my attention on her would be drastically lessened in the coming months. It seemed to not only put a wall between us and a void in our relationship, but also caused her growth as a teenager to stop abruptly, leaving her as an eleven year old in a thirteen year old’s body. I had no idea how to parent a child, let alone a teenager, but a child who refused to deal with her emotions and pretend she wasn’t deeply scarred by her own parent’s deaths? I was in over my head big time. She seemed to have decided to take her anger out on Bellamy the most, no doubt because he’d taken more of the time I’d spent with her away than anyone else, but all my efforts to reverse the change between us had failed miserably, and afterwards she spent most of her time with a group of young teenagers, hanging out with my mother, or alone in her tent.

She made a nasty face, silently turning away from me.

I stared at her face sadly for a moment, before asking, “Do you want to help me put this goo on some ribs?” She grinned in response, and took off towards the kitchens. I followed at a slower pace, watching the workers coming in from their jobs as the sun settled over the treetops. The kitchen’s front tarp was loose and flapped in the warm breeze - against my specific orders to keep the tents closed at all times during the sunlight hours. But I didn’t say anything, and it was a huge relief to feel the air against the back of my hot neck while we slathered the paste onto the grilling meats. I could hear the showers running behind us in the stalls, and I shivered at the thought of a cold shower after dinner washing away the dirt and sweat from my skin. I knew I reeked, but I tried to make sure the workers always had a chance at a shower before I took my turn. I worried that the large tank that held the water upstream would run empty on these hot days, but it had held steady the last few hot weeks and I’d been able to get my shower on time. The filtration system on the shower pipes wasn’t nearly as complex or intricate as the system we built onto the drinking water from the underground well, but it was enough to keep us from getting sick externally, as long as we didn’t ingest large amounts of the water. The five minute rule was commonly forgotten on hot days, but the tank would be filled from the river by the next morning anyways, so I let it slide most days. Unless there was Grounder complaints about it, then the rule was enforced. I knew I should be more careful than I had been at making sure that all sides thought I was on theirs, but between the Arcadians, the Grounders, and the Eligiates, I had seemed to reach some sort of middle ground, albeit a shaky and possibly fleeting one.

I asked Madi about her day, and she told me she spent it with Emori hauling buckets of water from the river to the boiling pots, and then to the bathing tent. The one upside the grounders had choosing to share a bathing chamber is that by the time the water was cleaned and boiled, it was still warm enough to comfortably bathe in. It wasn’t a welcome sight on these hot nights, but once it started cooling off people were sure to ditch our shower stalls for the Grounders steaming tubs without a second thought. It also helped they chose to boil the water for the tubs since we’d ran out of ways to filter the water, and I was in no position to tell them no if they asked me to go find one.

Grilled honey and meat flavors wafted through the air, and citizens had already begun lining up outside the dining tent, waiting for their well-deserved dinners. I noticed a boy in line staring at us, and my eyebrows shot up when Madi waved at him, blushing and giving the ground a sheepish look.

“Who’s that?” I asked, trying to sound disinterested so as not to scare her away from talking about him. I may not have given birth to the girl, but she was my daughter now in every sense of the word, and with that came not wanting to talk about feelings, bodily functions, and - most of all - boys. She chewed her cheek, thinking about whether to share the sacred information with me. If we’d been on better terms lately she would have spewed the information willingly but…  The nights I spent away from her and with Bellamy were starting to take a toll lately, and my heart squeezed at the thought. Two different worlds, crashing and tearing each other to shreds, leaving me to pick up the pieces and try desperately to fit them back together someway.

“Josh,” she answered quietly. I smiled, trying not to let her see my face light up at her response.

“Is he in classes with you?” I asked.

She shrugged, “Yeah, sometimes. He’s from the Ark, like you, but I don’t think you know him.”

I nodded, “He would have been young when I first came here, and I didn’t know many children then. Is he nice?” Every question brought me closer to her retreat, but she continued like it was the old days, when she shared everything with me.

“Yeah, he’s super nice. He likes dinosaurs, which I didn’t know about until he told me. Did you know there used to be giant monsters walking around, before the Cataclysm killed them all?” I smiled.

“Yes, I did. But the Cataclysm didn’t kill them, a meteor millions of years before humans crashed into earth and caused them to go extinct.” I desperately pulled every piece of information I could remember about dinosaurs, clinging to the hope it would open the door to our communication again.

“That’s cool,” she said, an excited gleam in her eyes. “I heard they-”

A hand came down on each of Madi and mine’s shoulders, squeezing lightly. “How are my two favorite girls?” Bellamy asked, grinning at each of us. The light in Madi’s eyes was quickly squelched out by her scowl, ending her sentence abruptly. She pushed the hand off her shoulder and stormed off toward the dining tent. I sighed, looking helplessly at Bellamy. He frowned.

“Still giving you the cold shoulder?” He asked.

I ran my hands over my face, rubbing my eyes with my palms, defeated.

“Well, she it seemed like she was starting to talk to me…” His shoulders dropped.

“Shit, Clarke, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare her off… I didn’t realize-”

“No, no. It’s not your fault, Bell. She’s just hard.” I stared at her retreating figure, wishing desperately that she could see in Bellamy what I did, what he could mean to our family. How we were safer with him around, how much he cared about her, for us. His hand dropped to my waist and gave a small squeeze, and I  wrapped my arm around his hip, resting my head on his chest as I watched my daughter take a place in line next to the boy. Josh. I shook my head.

“What?” Bellamy asked, placing his chin on top of my head.

“I just don’t know how to get through to her,” I said, pulling away from him when I noticed people staring in our direction. Our newfound relationship, whatever it may be, was frowned upon by most of the citizens. It seemed that, even after seven plus years, Bellamy’s decision to follow Pike and slaughter an army of Grounders had not been forgotten, and I was not ready to take on the responsibility of having his name cleared by the Grounders. It was going to take a lot more than apologies and time for them to forget such a horrendous mistake, and we hadn’t thought of the best solution yet. So, instead, we chose to keep ourselves as platonic as possible when in front of the eyes of the citizens. How we chose to act in our private hours, however, was nobody's business but our own.

He put his hands in his pockets, a quizzical look on his face. “I’ll try to talk to her tonight at dinner,” he said, and I grimaced.

He shot me a knowing look. “I know, okay? It didn’t work so well last time I tried -”

“Or anytime you’ve tried…”

“Yes, okay, I know. She doesn’t like talking to me. But, what if I just try talking to her about something she likes? Something that’s not ‘hey, I’m a great guy, these are the reasons you should like me’ and just, I don’t know, _chat.”_

I made an ugly face. “Chat.” I repeated. “She is not going to want to chat with you, Bellamy. Let’s just… have dinner, and see how it plays out. How about I try to get her to talk to _me_? Walk before we run?” My suggestion didn’t seem to sit well with him, but he agreed nonetheless.

When I’d finished saucing the meats, I found Bellamy’s place in line and joined him. Raven was ahead of us, boasting loudly about her new improvement she’d made on the still-not-working generators, and how they would run the air filters at half the kilowatts needed but almost double the strength. I silently thanked her for reminding those close to us that, yes, the filters would be working someday, and we just had to push through this hard time for a little longer.

We got our allotted amount of meat and bread and made our way to the table where Madi was sitting, which elicited a heavy sigh from her small lungs.

I smiled despite her attitude.

“How’s the venison?” I asked with forced excitement.

She shrugged. Again. Bellamy cleared his throat, and I shot him a look that quieted him before he could say anything.

I looked to my plate as everyone sat in tense silence, tearing my bread in half and taking a bite, the bitter and tasteless grains hitting my throat and making me thirsty immediately. I took a gulp of water from my glass and returned to the bread, eating the rest as fast as I could without choking, my eyes tearing up from the dryness. I downed the rest of my water, and Bellamy snickered next to me.

“Geeze, _Heda_ , do you have to unhinge your jaw at the dinner table?” I glared at him, but my heart lurched when a small laugh erupted from Madi. I tried to quell the joy I was feeling, knowing her laughter was a fleeting thing.

“It’s not my fault they served sand as a side dish.” I replied, trying to hide my smirk. When she laughed at that too, I couldn’t contain my grin, and it must have been contagious because Bellamy was smiling into his food, too.

I continued, “I’d like to see you eat it without choking.”

He cocked his head, looking at me with his eyebrows up.

“I accept that challenge,” he said as he picked up his cornbread and proceeded to take a bite of it, before animatedly chewing it and swallowing with extreme effort. He took another bite, and I could see his joke ending by him coughing the bread all over the table.

“Here!” I shoved his cup of water at him, and he waved it off, taking another bite and holding in his cough. “No,” he struggled to get out, and Madi burst into laughter.

“Bellamy!” I practically yelled as he continued chewing the dry bite with difficulty. “It’s not worth choking over. I concede! You win!”

He shot one hand up in the air in victory before using his other to chug down his water in two gulps. Madi slid hers across the table to him, giggling as she watched him down the second glass and spill most of it onto his shirt. He let out a breath, gasping like he’d just drowned on his meal, and I couldn’t help but watch Madi eat her bread in tiny bites with a huge grin on her face.

Bellamy went back to eating his meal normally and I grabbed his hand under the table, squeezing until he looked at me. “ _Thank you,”_ I mouthed, and he just smiled back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: 18+ this chapter contains explicit sexual scenes.

I knew I was pushing it when we walked back to the tents together, but with Madi trailing ahead of us chattering on about dinosaurs nobody seemed to notice Bellamy's hand grazing the small of my back. Except me. It was such a light touch that I should've barely felt it, but something in me was stirred from the interaction between Bellamy and my adopted daughter. Maybe it was hormonal - a flood of estrogen causing me to have pseudo-maternal instincts, lighting up the reproductive sensors in my brain and giving me an uncomfortable ache for intimate touching. _That’s probably all it is,_ I tried to assure myself, ignoring the aching feeling of loss when Madi and I stopped at our tent and Bellamy continued toward his own. Madi pulled the zipper open and crawled inside, and I looked back to give Bellamy a ‘goodnight’. He was looking at me with an unreadable look on his face, one foot already inside the tent. I gave a small wave, and he looked for a moment like he was going to say something when a group of Arkadian women turned the corner, their voices bouncing off the plastic tent walls toward us. He glared at them, successfully silencing their conversation as they caught his eye and passed us.

He opened his mouth to say something when another few people, this time Grounders, came around the corner. He threw his hand up in frustration and tossed the tent flap open before storming inside.

“Goodnight,” I said loudly, entering my tent with much less vigor. Madi was already changed and in bed, notebooks sprawled out  in front of her sloppily. Sketches of creatures adorned the pages, tall and muscular, with large heads and small front limbs. She seemed frustrated with them, but I was unsure if she was open to critique tonight. Instead of asking her about them, I silently changed for bed while she tossed the papers about, tearing a few in half and sorting through the others. I sat on the edge of my bed, combing the moisture through my freshly cleaned hair. It was cooler tonight than it had been in the past weeks, and the small breeze coming in through the open window flap was welcome on my sore skin.

I looked over when Madi threw herself back against her pillow in frustration, and I had to hold back a grin at the similarity between her tantrums and Bellamy's. It certainly was not the time to be comparing the two out loud, so instead I scooted over from the edge of my bed to hers, picking up her papers and gently thumbing through them. They were some of her best drawings I'd seen, and although the musculature was uneven and oddly misshapen, they were clearly portraits of dinosaurs. I wondered who would have been able to describe in such detail the long extinct creatures enough for her to actually portray them on paper, and it clicked why she was so frustrated with them. The boy in her class she'd mentioned at dinner - Josh, I think. I smiled, looking up at her scrunched features glaring at the ceiling. He was the first boy or girl - that I'd known of - that Madi had taken a liking to, and I tried to remember how it felt when I'd had my first crush. I couldn't even remember his name, but we'd met in the library on the Ark. It was so hard to handle at that age: the butterflies in my stomach, the being scared to speak to him, the not knowing when I'd see him next. And back then, we didn't have the end of the world looming over our heads - we'd thought the Ark would float in space forever, pumping the recirculated oxygen into our lungs until we died of old age. I couldn't imagine handling fluctuating hormones, my first crush, and radiation poisoning all at the same time.

' _I can barely handle it now,’_ I thought, watching Madi throw her blankets off her legs and stomp over to the tent door.

“Where are you going?” I asked, setting the papers down on the bed and following her out the door.

“I need to stay with Grandma and Kane tonight,” she yelled down the hallway behind her. I cringed at her loud voice echoing around the tents during quiet hour. I followed behind a few rows before stopping.

“Madi!” I whispered forcefully, hoping to dispel the attraction she'd caught from disgruntled tent occupants staring at us through their unzipped doors. “Sorry,” I mumbled defeatedly towards their tents, watching the teenager stomp around the corner towards my mother's tent. I wondered what I'd done to elicit such a response, but realized soon that she didn't likely have a logical reason for the tantrum, and I shouldn't take it personally. I tried not to let it hurt me that we'd be spending tonight apart again, but it was hard not to be disappointed that she spent more time with my mother than with me lately. I knew I wasn't her real mother, and I was sure that her adoptive grandmother was a far better maternal figure than I was, so it really did make sense that she would want to be around her more. It should make sense, and maybe it did, but my stomach still twisted from the disappointment.

It was quiet again when I reached my tent, and I hesitated as I stared at Bellamy's door.

“Hey,” I heard behind me, and I turned towards the voice.

I smiled at Octavia, her black hair dripping water onto her tanned shoulders and soaking into her damp towel. “How’s it going, O?” I asked, my hand resting against my tent frame.

She shrugged, squeezing the water out of her hair and into the gravel under her feet.

“Same shit, different day,” she shook the droplets off her hands and gave me a sideways glance, smirking.

“Have a good night, Clarke,” she said, tossing the flap open and entering the tent. I felt somehow caught by the look she'd given me, and I zipped open my tent, freezing when I looked inside. Sitting on my bed, pulling the socks off his feet, was Bellamy. He glanced at me and jerked his head towards the back wall, signalling me to get inside.

I looked behind me, and seeing an empty hallway, kelt inside and zipped the door closed. “Family problems?” He asked, undoing the button on his pants and standing to pull them down each leg. I pretended not to watch as I walked towards the nightstand and grabbed a hair tie, pulling the longest strands into a bun and letting the short ones on my neck fall messily down.

I shook my head, unsure if he was looking at me. “I don't know what just happened, honestly. We were having such a good night…” I said, lifting the sheet off the mattress and climbing underneath it. Bellamy folded his pants and placed them on the dresser with his shirt and socks, wearing only a loose pair of boxers and a wrist brace I'd begged him to wear after he sprained it during one of his classic drunken-Murphy brawls. He rubbed it as he thought about his response, nodding idly before shaking his head.

“She was in a particularly good mood, but how long could it really last?” He smiled at me, amused by my look of despair.

“Longer than that,” I said as he crawled over me and onto the opposite side of the bed.

I watched him wince as he propped himself up onto his bad wrist, and I took it gently in my hands.

“Let me see,” I said as he drew his hand back in reflex. Tentatively he held it out to me and I unhooked the metal clasp holding the bandage together, unwinding it until his bare wrist was exposed, the bruise underneath yellowed with time. It looked to be healing well, but his wince had told me otherwise. It should still be painful, but not enough for Bellamy - who was very good at masking emotions - to be unable to hide. I pressed the tender middle part of the bruise and he flinched, frowning at me in annoyance.

I held tighter when he tried to withdraw his hand, and I returned his look with my own.

“You need to wear this more,” I said, slowly stretching his hand forward and then backward, repeating the movement a few times. “You're going to lose dexterity if you're not careful. I think it's a sprain but without radiographs I can't tell if there's a hairline fracture or not.”

He shrugged, “I'll be fine.”

I rolled my eyes, “You will not. You could be injuring yourself worse by not wearing the brace and if you're not careful you could end up with a weak grip and lose the ability to hold a gun correctly. Have you tried holding a heavy rifle recently?” He stared at me without responding, aware that I knew he hadn't been able to do more than carry one around in a week.

“You can’t protect anyone if you can't get the rifle off your shoulder and into your hand.”

“I can't hold one at all with the brace on,” he said, his wrist still resting on my fingers.

“At least this way if I need to shoot, I can get one good shot in.” My mouth opened, a sarcastic response sitting on the tip on my tonight. I managed to stop myself before we turned this into an all-out fight by clamping my mouth closed tightly, re-wrapping his wrist in the bandaging and setting it into his lap.

“Bell,” I said defeatedly, turning to shut the lamp off. “If you do that then you risk either re-breaking the bone or lengthening your recovery time by weeks, maybe even months. Let's just try to get it better as quickly as possible, so you can go back to whatever it is you do with that rifle in our safe, currently-peaceful camp.” He smirked, adjusting the bandage.

“‘Currently’ is the key word, princess,” he said in the dark before laying down on his side and resting the hand on my thigh. I swallowed, the feeling from earlier coming back. Hot coals on my leg, shooting up and causing me to clench the muscles involuntarily. I scooted down into the bed quickly so he didn't notice my response, but when I did he moved the hand to my abdomen, resting on the hem of my sleep shorts idly. I wondered if he realized how close he was, or if he noticed the effect he was having on my heightened senses.

I looked over to see if he was sleeping yet, and found his eyes on me. I dug my fingernails into my palm for a distraction, but it was at most minimally effective, and that was only until he moved his hand into my hair and slowly ran his thumb along my temple a few times. I smiled in the dark, unsure if he could see me or not, closing my eyes as the caresses lulled me into a sleepy state. Just as I was beginning to feel the sleep taking me under, I felt his lips on my forehead.

He pulled back, resting his arm in my abdomen again.

“No nightmares tonight, okay, _Wanheda?”_

I was asleep before I could respond.

* * *

_His breath was hot on my neck, the small gasps in my ear eliciting a sensation I hadn’t felt in such a long time. His hands were everywhere - in my hair, on my waist, pushing my arms above my head, hooking under my shirt hem. I sat up, letting him pull the fabric over my head and return his mouth to my neck. He dragged his tongue under my chin to my ear, and I moaned loudly, surprising myself and speeding his movements. Bellamy pulled back, locking eyes with me in the darkness. He was panting heavily as he ran his fingers up my sides and around my back, unhooking the clasp and letting my bra fall to the floor. He looked down, and his mouth was on me in an instant, licking, sucking, his hips grinding into mine hard. I couldn’t keep quiet, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t a soul in this wasteland to hear us._

_I ran my fingers down his chest, onto his stomach, feeling the muscles tight with strain, helping our bodies move with each other. I copied him, pulling his shirt up and above his head. He separated from me for only a second before he was back, his mouth crashing into mine with a hunger I could taste on his tongue. His fingers glided down my sides, stopping to hook around my belt, fumbling with the buckle until it was free. He shifted his weight off of my hips, and I moaned in protest, my body begging for the friction again until I felt his fingers slip into my pants and between my thighs. I gasped, gripping his arm with my nails hard enough to dent the flesh. He moved his fingers in slow, gentle movements and I felt the end nearing. I moved my fingers into his hair and moaned, unable to silence myself. I met his mouth with mine, and he parted his lips willingly, my tongue meeting his and trying quiet myself._

_This seemed to urge him on, and the build up finally released. I cried out against his mouth, and he slowed his movements to an unbearable speed, until we were both still against each other. I rested my head against his chest and he gripped my hair with his fingers, panting in sync with me. He slid his hand out of my waistband and wrapped it around my back, crushing me to his chest. We laid like that for a moment, speechless and tired, the events of the day draining us and finally taking their toll. I looked up after a few minutes and touched his beard, the scruff a new feeling against my fingers. I smiled at him, and he didn’t return the gesture. He was looking too intently at me, like he’d never seen anything like me in this world before. I swallowed, unsure of how to move forward._

_Bellamy seemed to know exactly where he was going next, and I had no intentions of stopping him. In a flash he’d rolled me on top of him, my thighs spreading and legs wrapping around his waist. I leaned down to meet his face again and he’d met me halfway, our lips touching so softly I could barely feel it at first. He tangled his fingers in my hair, and we sat like that for a moment, kissing tentatively and gently as if the moments before had never happened and we were experiencing it for the first time._

_I brought my hands down and fumbled with the button on his jeans awkwardly, trying to undo the zipper of his pants, which was closed tight against his groin. It finally came loose and he groaned-_

I gasped, sitting up abruptly in my bed and grabbing my chest. I was sweating down my neck and back, the heat of the tent clawing at my lungs and making me pant. _Shit!_ I thought, my thighs pressed together tightly, attempting to quell the heat between them. I shook my head back and forth, rubbing my eyes with my palms until I saw stars behind my lids.

“Hey,” Bellamy said quietly beside me, and I startled involuntarily.

“Sorry,” I whispered, my voice groggy.

He sat up next to me, rubbing his eyes while they adjusted to the darkness in the tent.

“It’s okay,” he said, running one hand along my back. “Bad dream?” He asked, and I nodded furiously, too embarrassed to admit that it was, in fact, a very _good_ dream.  

“C’mon,” he said, laying on his side and opening his arm for me to crawl up next to him. Thankful for the darkness to hide my rosy cheeks, I joined him under the thin sheet, his arm wrapping around my shoulder in a tight embrace, his leg sliding under mine and resting between my thighs. I prayed to whatever Gods there were that he didn’t feel the heat on his leg.

Unable to go back to sleep, I laid in bed until the sun was just beginning to touch the sky, the heat from the tent mixed with the heat from Bellamy’s skin suffocating me until I had to get up. I extracted myself from his limbs, trying not to wake him, and grabbed my towel before heading for the showers. I had taken one before bed the previous night, but if I was going to make it through today I was going to need a cold shower. Everyone was exhausted, and beside the farm workers who’d already made their way out to the fields, I was the only one awake in the camp. Hanging the towel on the side of a shower stall, I walked over to the sinks and splashed water on my face, the droplets running down my neck and onto my back, releasing some of the tension I had built up. I grabbed a drinking cup from the stack on the shelf and filled it up, finishing it in two gulps before rinsing the cup and replacing it. I looked in the mirror, the dirt caking up around my hairline from my sweat a gross reminder of the night I’d had.

I flipped open the latch on the shower head to release the freezing water and stepped under the stream, gasping as it bit my flesh from neck to thighs, and down to my toes. I took a deep breath in, and held it, releasing it a moment later as my skin slowly acclimated to the temperature. I leaned against the side of the stall, letting my aching body soak in the chill, erasing the vivid images in my dreams.

I opened my eyes and Bellamy was there, leaning against the stall with a curious look on his face. “Ah!” I startled, grabbing my chest automatically and standing up straight. He chuckled, his eyes not leaving my face to travel onto my naked body. “Bellamy!” I said in a hushed tone, only mildly angered he was close enough to my body to see all of it, and more irritated because his face brought back the memories of my dream in vivid detail. I felt my cheeks burn immediately, and I hoped he thought it was from my modesty and nothing else.

“Two showers in less than eight hours, princess? You must have turned a new leaf. One that’s decidedly cleaner, I take it.” I smacked his arm with one hand and returned it to my breast.

“It was _hot_ last night, okay?” I countered, closing the space between us so I could whisper the words, hiding my body behind the wood barrier. “I couldn’t sleep after my… nightmare, and - I deserve an extra shower sometimes, okay?” My voice was unusually high, and squeaked a bit on the last word. He laughed audibly in my face, adjusting his feet so his face was less than a foot from mine, leaning closer over the stall with his elbows rested atop.

“Wo-ow, _Heda_ , something’s got you all hot and bothered. What happened in that dream of yours?” He grinned, and I looked away quickly, my blush returning.

“Nothing,” I said, scrambling for some excuse to come to mind, but nothing did. I lied instead, “I don’t remember-”

“Because,” he cut me off, grinning widely. Panic welled up inside my chest at his teasing tone, “I’m not sure what could have been so frightening in that nightmare that had you saying _my name_ over and over.” I looked back at him and wished I hadn’t, because his stare was boring into me. Unable to look away, I opened my mouth for a response, but couldn’t find one. I contemplated denying the truth, but his eyes dropped to my lips and the dream flashed through my mind again. Without thinking, or reasoning, or rationalizing, I closed the gap. His hands reached over the stall wall and grabbed the back of my head, our mouths crashing into each other’s. The kiss was so frantic - months, _years_ of built up frustration urging us into a frenzied embrace, grabbing at each other from over the wood barrier, unable to get close enough for what our bodies wanted. Bellamy tore his face away and clawed at the stall door, tearing it open and pushing my body back against the wall, freezing water pouring down on his clothed body, two contrasting temperatures clashing against my skin. In my dream we’d been so smooth, our hands and bodies knowing where to go, how to fit against each other, but in this reality we were shaking, our hands fumbling, our lips the only stable part on a rocking ship. I was so nervous, and I could feel he was as well. His hands grazed my sides, careful not to touch my breasts, until they made their way back onto my neck and gripped my hair, pulling gently to expose my throat. He moved there, his lips so soft against my skin, his other hand gripping my waist tightly. I was careful not to make any sounds, fully aware that any moment the workers would be awake and gathering in the courtyard to get ready for their days. Bellamy, however, was verbal in his pleasure, moaning against my skin without hindrance. I tried shushing him, but he just groaned “Uh-uh,” into my skin, continuing his trail down my throat and onto my chest.

“Bellamy,” I whispered, to which he responded by pushing my hips against the wall and grinding into them. I gasped loudly, and he smirked, returning his lips to mine and silencing me. I pulled back, “Bell, I-” I gasped, his fingers suddenly inside me, slowly moving in and out, slick against my wetness. I caught his eye and he grinned, watching me as I tried desperately to keep quiet against the pleasure.

He kept at it, and I was almost there - whispering “ _Don’t stop-”_ against his mouth when I heard it - the flap of a tent door in the wind, the crunch of someones boots, and I dropped to the ground. Bellamy wasn’t letting an audience stop him, and he dropped to his knees with me, his hand never leaving my body. “Bell-” his other hand covered my mouth, silencing me before I could stop him. It worked, and I put my hands over his as I finished silently against his fingers.

He moved his hand back to my waist, breathing hard above me, and I listened hard to the movements of feet against the gravel, silently urging them to keep going in the opposite direction. They stopped near the stall for a moment and my heart skipped a beat, waiting to see if they were here for a morning shower. A few moments passed, and the sound picked up again, moving past my stall and out onto the pathway that led to the farmlands. I let out a shaky breath, and Bellamy uncovered my mouth, dropping our hands to our sides. We stared at each other for what felt like years, panting silently, the cold water pouring out onto his back and splashing onto my naked body.

I rested my head back against the stall wall as Bellamy reached up to turn the water off. He stood up and looked around the area, shaking the water out of his hair. It must have been vacant, because he knelt back down to give me a quick, firm kiss on the lips, and then left the stall without looking back. I sat there on the gravel, in the nude, drying in the hot summer air until the familiar sounds of people waking and moving around started up all around the camp. I stood slowly, looking out to see the hundreds of workers out of their tents, preparing for their days in front of the long mirrors that hung above the multi-faucet communal sinks. I couldn’t help but stare in awe at the normality of the scene in front of me, everyone oblivious to what had just happened.

I turned the cold water faucet back on and finished rinsing my body.

As I grabbed my towel from the hook and wrapped it around myself, I locked eyes with someone in the mirror staring at me. Grinning as he buttoned his shirt up and placed his ball cap over his wet hair, Bellamy winked at me before turning on his heel and joining the line of people crunching their way up the gravel road.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Scene containing rape.

The next day started in such mundane normality that I began to think the morning’s events never happened. I helped on the farm, tilling the land while the younger kids planted the seeds carefully, spacing them apart and covering them in soil. I watched Madi through the corn stalks, gingerly picking through the ears to see which ones were ready for harvesting. She smiled at me more than once, and even came over to ask what I thought tonight’s meal was going to be. I answered with venison and bread again, and she scrunched her nose at me.

I laughed, “I know, it’s getting old but at least it's real food and not protein packs anymore.”

She nodded, shifting the gathered corn between arms. “I’d just like to get a bite of cheese for once. Maybe even some milk, chocolate milk!” I chuckled at that, knowing full well she’d never had chocolate milk - and neither had I.

“Someday soon the goats will be old enough and we’ll have our fill of dairy, just you wait. However, I’m not actually sure our digestive systems can handle it… We didn’t have dairy products on the Ark.”

She frowned, “Milk will make us _sick_? Ugh. I haven’t even had it yet and it’s already taken away from me,” she dramatically threw her head back. 

I raised an eyebrow, walking along beside the stocks with her. “Well, adult humans naturally were lactose intolerant, but some developed the ability to process it. So, let's just hope we're the lucky ones that came from a line of lactose-tolerant ancestors.”

“Well,” she started, bright eyed with ideas, “We can eat eggs, right? Isn’t that the same thing? That’s from another animal.”

“Maybe,” I answered, not wanting to further her disappointment.

“Yes!” She exclaimed, turning around and running towards the cart of corn ears and dumping her collection into it.

I took a break around noon, the sun shining brightly above me, erasing my shadow from the ground. I sat down on a bench under the break tent near the corn field, grabbing my bottle and taking a swig, the water soothing my scorched throat as it made its way down.

The area was calm, a light breeze dusting my shoulders as I pulled the wrap off my head and wiped the sweat from my brow. The air was thicker today, a heavy moisture reminding me of the pending weather change every moment. A silence suddenly fell over the camp, quiet awareness falling over the faces of the women nearest me, a few looking at me with worried eyes. Then I heard it, the screaming.

Jumping up, I looked around for the noise, the gritty terror flooding my ears. I grabbed my rifle from next to my pack on the ground and took off towards the treeline, the greenery of the forest muffling the sounds. I could hear a scuffle, bodies hitting against each other and rocks crunching beneath feet. I heard a woman moan, and I raised the rifle onto my shoulder, searching over the scope for the source of the noise. I saw legs behind a tree, kicking wildly against an unknown threat. “Hey!” I yelled as I circled around the tree and revealed the scene. A woman younger than myself was against a tree, tears streaming down her cheeks mixed with the blood dripping from a laceration through her brow. Above her, holding a knife to her throat and thrusting his hips into hers, was an Elegiate prisoner. My stomach lurched.

“Stop! Now!” I screamed, aiming my rifle with shaking hands at the back of his head. He ignored me, the threat falling on deaf ears.

“Inmate!” I screamed desperately, catching his attention enough to turn his head and look at me. Morton, I remembered the name suddenly, my breath catching. A prisoner from the Eligius Corporation who helped in the kitchens and served our food. I remembered his smile when I thanked him for the tray of meat just last night, his calm demeanor as he’d flipped the meats on the grill and wiped his hands on his apron, asking me how my night was going.

I’d never taken this man for anything other than someone who’s been in the wrong place at the wrong time and gotten himself into trouble for it - just as I had, long ago, on the Ark.

My heart dropped at my ignorance. I should have been harsher on the inmates when they first arrived. We interrogated them all thoroughly before allowing them into our camp, the ones who hadn’t passed our strict set of guidelines banished to the forest outside the walls. Morton had always been so kind, helpful around the camp, picking up odd jobs to help out the community and keeping to himself otherwise. This man was not the same man I’d just chatted with last night, his eyes wild and crazy, fingers white on the grip of the knife, blood staining his shirt sleeves.

I was helpless against him, the woman’s neck bruising against the knife edge, my rifle aimed at his head would only hit him and go through to the woman, killing them both. I was speechless, which was a feat for me. The words usually flowed through me and into the world like water in a stream. But instead I was at a loss, staring as he continued his torture, the woman still with defeat now as he finished his heinous act in broad daylight with me as his audience. I decided that, now or never, I was going to have to sacrifice this woman to save the rest of our group. Letting this man loose was not an option. I looked through my scope and put my finger on the trigger, the muscles in my hand tightening just as the man let out a grunt, his head flying to the side as the butt of a gun slammed against the side of it. The woman screamed, and I was so stunned I didn’t even let my finger loose, I just stared through my scope at the bloody neck of the woman where the man’s head had been.

“Clarke!” Bellamy yelled, jarring me out of my stupor and dropping my gun to my side.

I watched as Bellamy wrestled the man onto the ground, wrenching his arms behind his back and pulling the handcuffs off of his belt. “What are you doing?” He asked, looking over his shoulder at me. I stared blankly back at him.

“Help her?” The order was almost a question, Bellamy’s confused look breaking my silence. I ran to her, gently pulling her arms out from the tight ball she’d wrapped them in.

“Jenn?” I said softly, recognizing the girl once I got a clear look of her face, the dark curls matted with sweat and blood sticking to her cheeks. “Jenn, can you stand?” I was unsure of how to handle the woman at this point. Sick or ill, yes, heat stroke fever, okay, mental breakdown, maybe, but rape victim? I was so far out of my league that I just knelt there in front of her, watching her sob into her hands. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Bellamy nodded toward Morton.

“Take him. I’ll get her,” he said, and I nodded in approval. I stood up and grabbed the half conscious Morton by the handcuffs, watching Bellamy lean down and scoop the woman up under her legs. She was curled into a ball so small that she didn’t even look like an adult, but like a sleeping child being carried to bed. I pushed the man forward, causing him to stumble.

The walk back to camp was a blur to me, and I found my way on instinct, Bellamy trailing behind me with the woman in his arms.

When we got to the treeline there was a crowd waiting to see what the commotion was. I pushed Morton through it and passed the kitchen tent, the housing tents, and to the back of the compound where a grate cover sat in the ground, adorning the top of the cell we’d dug out, the hinges still shiny and new, empty and unused. Until now.

“Murphy!” I yelled, my throat aching. I knew he’d be close, never straying far from chaos and trouble.

“Yeah?” He asked, approaching cautiously.

“Open the grate.” I instructed.

He hesitated, staring at the man in my custody for a moment before kneeling down and unlatching the door. I pushed him down into it, and he stumbled down the steps into the dirt.

“What’d he do to get on your bad side, _Wanheda_?” he asked, carefully standing back a few feet as anger radiated off me.  

I didn’t answer him. I threw the door back down, not bothering to undo the man’s cuffs before latching it shut and snapping the padlock in place.

I walked back to the camp in a daze, ignoring the speculating crowd that was surrounding the tents. I hesitated in front of the door, the lines a kaleidoscope in front of my eyes. I tried to blink the effect away, but nausea built up until I tasted bile in my throat. I swallowed it down, tossing the tent flap aside.

The medical tent was empty except for Bellamy, my mother, and Jenn. Bellamy leapt up at my arrival, standing defensively in front of the treatment bed before seeing it was me.

He let out a breath, “Hey.” I approached the bed cautiously, cringing at the sight of her unclothed body. Bellamy kept his eyes on me as he sat back into his chair, and I watched as my mother stripped the last few pieces of clothing away from the unconscious girl’s body. I pulled up a chair next to his and sat silently as her wounds were cleaned and bandaged, my mother suturing the gash on her forehead with fell precision. When she began to stir, I yanked a blanket of another table and threw it over her body.

She opened her eyes, looking around frantically at the room before landing on Bellamy. Her eyes shone in terror at his presence, and Bellamy leaned back in his chair away from her. I jumped up to grab her wrists as she began to struggle, flailing her arms in an attempt to escape.

“Jenn,” I said firmly. “Jenn, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

She tried to sit up and I held her arms down, her frantic struggling beneath my hands bringing the bile back to my throat.

“Jenn,” Bellamy said in a quiet voice. “Jenn, It’s Clarke and Abby and Bellamy, okay? You’re safe in here.” She let out a blood-curdling scream and Bellamy dropped into his chair, his hands rubbing his face as I tried to soothe the girl into silence.

“Fuck.” I heard Bellamy mutter under his breath.

“Jenn, you’re in the hospital sweetie. Can you look at me?” My mother’s words coaxed her into a quiet state after a moment, and she smiled at her. I loosened my grip on her shoulders.

“Jenn, you’ve just been attacked, but you’re safe now, okay?” She continued.

“Can you tell me what happened?” The girls head whipped back and forth to the side, shaking furiously as if to erase the memories from inside. My mother sighed in defeat.

“I’m going to have to sedate her. Bellamy, can you get my injectable medications?”

He complied, grabbing the chest off the counter and setting it on the tray next to her. She shuffled around through the bottles until she pulled out one labeled Diaz- something, the rest of the word rubbed off with use. Opening a box on the table next to her, she pulled out a small packet and tore the sterile packaging open, extracting the syringe from inside and pulling up an entire syringe full of the medication. She tapped the bubbles to the top and squirted them out of the tip before replacing the needle cap.

“Can you hold off, Clarke?” She asked, and I wrapped my hand around the top of the girl’s bicep, her vein rising under the thin skin inside her elbow.

She inserted the needle, a flash of blood coming to the hub signaling she was in the right place. I loosened my hold and my mother pushed the syringe’s plunger slowly until the girls trembling figure stilled.

“What did you give her?” Bellamy asked, still sitting a distance away from the table.

“Valium. It should calm her down enough, but still allow her to talk to us. There’s better medications to use, however, I don’t have any left.” He nodded in response.

Without her thrashing, I was able to sit down next to Bellamy and wait for Jenn to talk. He was sitting with his chin on his hands, gripped so tightly they were white and his face was flush with anger. I reached out and grabbed one hand, gently extracting it from the other and holding it on his lap. He covered his mouth with the other and shook his head. “What the fuck just happened?” He asked no one in particular. We both stayed silent.

“Where am I?” Jenn’s words cut through the silence, my mother responding carefully with where she was, what just happened. Jenn nodded, looking around the hospital, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. Bellamy took a deep breath and stood up, slowly walking next to the table and keeling down by the girl.

“Hey Jenn, my name’s Bellamy. We’ve met before. I was a guard on the Ark, and I’d like to ask you some questions when you’re ready, okay?” She stared at him, unresponsive. “When I ask you these questions, you may be frightened by them, and not want to answer, but I promise you that once you tell me what happened, you never have to speak about it again, okay? You never have to say it again, Jenn, I promise. I just need to hear it once, Jenn.” He said, her eyes staring into his, glazed over from the medication. She nodded to him, and took a deep breath.

The interrogation was what I’d consider routine. He asked her where she was, what she was doing, if she’d ever met her attacker before. She responded dully, the tears never ceasing to fall from her eyes while she recalled in detail her attack.

When he was done, Abby asked the girl if she could examine her legs and privates, and Bellamy took that as his cue to leave. I followed quietly behind. He instructed two guards to stand outside the medical tent and not allow anyone in unless they were gravely injured, with no exceptions.

He walked over to the sink and I stood several feet away, watching as he splashed water onto his face and neck, wetting his hair and running his hands through it. He turned to walk down the row of tents and I hesitated, wondering if he was trying to be alone. I looked around, unsure of where to go in my still panicked state, and I felt his hand on my forearm. I looked at him, and he gestured toward the tent, inviting me to follow.

I followed silently behind him, walking past the rows of tents until we’d reached his. He opened the flap for me and I ducked under it, taking my shoes off and setting them on the rack near the door, crawling onto the mattress and watching as the dirt from my hands streaked his sheets.

He shut the flap and walked over to his chest of drawers in the opposite corner, lifting his shirt over his head and tossing it in the hamper next to it. Hanging his hat on a hook, my eyes shot open as he tugged at the zipper on his pants, pulling them down and tossing them into the hamper. He turned back to me and crawled onto the mattress in only his briefs, and I suddenly felt overdressed.

“Fuck, it’s hot in here…” he mumbled, turning on his side and facing me. He looked at my shirt sleeves, tinged brown and coloring the surrounding sheets, and smiled a little.

“You’re filthy, _Wanheda._ Why don’t you-” he started tugging at the bottom of my shirt and I slapped my hands down over my chest, surprising us both.

“Shit, Clarke, I’m sorry,” he said, hands hovering over me like they weren’t sure where to go. I let go, forcing my hands down to my sides.

“No, Bellamy, I’m sorry I… I don’t know why I did that.” I said, looking from his hands to mine. I saw mine were shaking, the adrenaline pumping through my veins overwhelming my body and putting me on high alert. I thought about the symptoms of shock - tachycardia, pale skin, injected mucous membranes, low temperature, nausea, dizziness. I felt my forehead and it was clammy and cool despite the raging heat within the tent. I sat up, putting my hand to his forehead to check the difference in temperature. His skin felt like it was on fire, and his pupils looked normal. I started shivering, and Bellamy sat up abruptly.

“Clarke?” He asked frantically. “Clarke, what's going on? Are you okay?”

I sat up with him, crossing my arms and hugging my abdomen. “Yeah,” I answered, “I’m just in shock.”

“I mean, yeah it was shocking, but -”

“No,” I cut him off, shaking my head. “I’m not shocked, I’m _in_ shock. Clinically. My body is trying to compensate for what it thinks was a trauma. Cool temperature, fast heart rate, dilated pupils - I think I’m okay I just - I think I need to sleep it off.”

He gave me a concerned look, “You just need to sleep? That’s how you treat shock?”

 _No_ , I thought. “Yes. Yeah, I just need to lay down for a while and sleep it off. Can you… can you stay here with me for a while?”

“Of course,” he said, laying back down on the mattress facing me. “Are you sure you’re alright? I can go get your mom -”

“No, please, Bell. Let’s just take a break for an hour or so.” I knew full well that if I went to my mother, she’d set me up with IV fluids to treat my staggeringly low blood pressure, sedatives for my heart rate, and a slew of other medications that were more use on someone else who was in worse danger than I.

I tried to lift my shirt above my head, but my arms wouldn’t budge. I sat there gripping the hem, staring at the bright white tarp wall in front of us, begging my heart to slow and my anxiety to recede.

Bellamy seemed to understand my dilemma, because he stood up and walked over to the drawers, getting out a thin white short sleeve shirt and brought it over to me, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“May I?” The soft tone he used made my heart squeeze, and I let go of my shirt, forcing my arms into the air. He tugged the dirty fabric over my head and slid it off my arms, tossing it into his hamper with his clothes. He replaced the shirt with his clean one, tugging it down my chest and making sure not to touch my bare skin.

I gave a small smile, laying down and patting the bed next to me. He obliged, joining me on his side and bringing the sheet up above my shoulders. I kicked my pants off under the sheet and tossed them to the floor. Closing my eyes, I willed my body to calm itself into a dreamless sleep. One, I hoped, that I’d wake up from.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mention of miscarriage.

Lucky for me, I did live through the night, sleeping so heavily that I missed the rest of the day and dinner. A plate of bread and meat sat next to the bed on a metal night stand, cool enough for me to think It’d been sitting there a while. My stomach growled, and I popped a piece of meat into my mouth and swallowed it without chewing.

The lantern was on, but it was dark outside and there were no sounds of people around me, so I assumed it must be late at night. There were no sounds, I realized suddenly. No one snoring, or breathing or… I heard it then. The dull, gray noise, like background music.  _ Rain.  _ I was up within seconds, pulling a coat over my head and throwing the door open. I slowly reached my hand out until just my fingertips were wet and I yanked them back inside. I waited a few seconds for the pain, but it didn’t come. I tried again, putting my whole hand into the downpour and leaving it there for a moment. When I was sure it was safe, I dashed out the door and sprinted to the dining tent. I looked around frantically, and when I didn’t see anyone there I took off up the hill towards the river. When I made it over the hill, the wind hit me so hard I stumbled. The valley our tents were in must have been sheltered from the gales, but this side of the hill was another world. The water poured down the river at a hundred miles an hour, sloshing over the side and tearing the grass apart, flooding the farmlands. Water on the mill’s walls shone in the moonlight, the wood planks swaying dangerously in the wind. The trees branches picked up speed, and I felt my jacket rip off my shoulders as I stared hard into the darkness. Silhouettes of figures crowded around the base of the building, the faint sound of yelling piercing through the deafening wind. I took a few steps before dropping to one knee, the sheer force of the wind now at such a speed I could barely walk. It had only been minutes before that I was in my tent, listening to the quiet raindrops hit the roof. How had it changed so drastically? I forced my knee to stand, pushing against the wind at an agonizingly slow speed. I finally made it to the river’s edge, and jumped back as a small plank whizzed past my head at a dangerous speed. 

“Clarke!” I heard my name through the wind, and squinted to make out who was calling me. 

“Monty!” I yelled back, trying desperately to find a safe way across the rushing water. 

He gripped the edge of the building, shimmying across the deck and over to where I was standing, the water splashing my ankles and burning my skin. 

“Here!” He yelled as he stretched out an arm across the water, several feet from where I was standing. I waded through the stream, careful to step where I’d have stable footing. I was a foot away when I launched forward, grabbing desperately for Monty’s outstretched hand.

Our hands clapped loudly when they met, echoing all around us, and it was suddenly white everywhere. I was standing in a pool of nothingness, my arms stretched out and grabbing onto Monty’s hand, which was attached to a wildly confused Monty. We looked around the room, the vast space of nothingness stretching out for miles. 

“Clarke?” He asked, voice shaking. I looked down at my shirt, which had changed. It was a white tank top. A dry, white tank top, and Monty was wearing a clean white t-shirt and sweatpants.  I started to ask a question when the room flickered, darkness engulfing our bodies. It was white again, and suddenly we were soaking wet, the soreness in my muscles throbbing up my arms and down my legs. The rain started pouring all around us, and we were in the river again, the wind hitting my chest like a brick wall. I gasped, the burning pain shooting up my legs as I lost my footing and the river began pulling me in. “Help!” I screamed, grasping frantically at his outstretched hand. Monty seemed to snap back into reality, and brought his arm in toward the building. The force of the river tore at our arms, the skin stretched tightly against our tired muscles. A silhouette appeared next to Monty’s, and another arm grabbed me by my shirt collar and heaved me onto the deck, the force of the wind blocked by the rocking wall. I fell against the deck, gasping for breath as I looked up at my savior. Murphy was clutching to the boards on the wall, yelling out to Monty words I couldn’t hear. They bent down to me, dragging me up under my arms and placing me on my feet. We linked arms and fought back across the deck and onto the opposite shoreline. Murphy dropped my arm and I fell onto my knees on the muddy grass, gulping air into my sore lungs. 

I looked over at the group huddled together on the shoreline, searching the faces. I turned to Murphy, “Bellamy?” The name drowning in the wind, he moved closer to me and I put my face near his ear and repeated myself. Murphy turned his head and looked at the swaying mill, gesturing towards the building. 

I cursed, crawling on my hands and knees toward the platform, lifting myself up by the boards in the wall and crept toward the main door, throwing myself through the doorway, stumbling onto the ground inside. The wind was dramatically slower in the building, but the sound was still deafening and I looked around frantically until I found him. I yelled his name, but the storm was too loud. Four people were stacking logs against the wall, hammering them into the floor as joists to steady the wall. I pushed myself up off the floor, my skin still hot with radiation burns from the splashing stream. I was halfway to him when Bellamy saw me, fear flooding his features. I saw him mouth my name, and he dropped the log from his hands and ran to me. 

“What are you doing out here?” He screamed against the wind. “Why aren't you in bed still? It's dangerous out here!”

“Why are you out here in the middle of a hurricane?” I screamed back at him, and he looked back at the group waiting his orders. “Keep going!” He yelled, not waiting to see if they listened. 

I shook his shoulders, “Bellamy, what is going on?!” I screamed, my eyes stinging from the flying debris. 

“You shouldn’t be here!” He replied, dragging me over to the corner of the room. A loud crack reverberated through the building and a support beam began to fall towards us. Bellamy threw his body over mine as it came down, and I felt myself scream. We looked up, and the beam sat frayed and jagged less than a foot away. Bellamy kicked the beam away and stood us up. A bright, white light flashed throughout the sky and lit up the room. My heart skipped a beat, and I remembered the room with Monty I’d just been in moments ago, forgotten in the chaos. 

“Bellamy!” he looked back, leaning close to hear me. “Did anything weird just happen to you?” I didn’t know how else to explain it. He squinted at me, looking dumbfounded. 

“You mean like this fucking  _ hurricane _ ?” I shook my head furiously, ducking with him as another wood plank fell to the ground beside us. 

“No!” I yelled. “Like - a bright white light, a room; like a different place entirely.” He stared at me, bewildered, and shook his head.  _ Nevermind,  _ I mouthed, my throat too sore to yell anymore. 

Bellamy looked to the door as if contemplating throwing me out of it, but decided against it. He stood up, and when I tried to follow him he pushed down on my shoulders and kept me seated.  _ Stay here,  _  he mouthed. I jumped to protest, but another beam came crashing down in the middle of the room, Bellamy and I shielding our faces as debris shot around the room. “Just stay here!” He screamed over the wind, and the look on his face held me there. 

They had the walls supported within minutes, ten or so planks leaning against the wall pushing back against the hurricane winds. Bellamy waved the rest of the group inside, the shaking mill a safer alternative to the hundred mile an hour winds and the flying debris adorning them. 

We huddled in the corner together, the rain drops coming through the gaps in the wall like shards of glass on the backs of our necks, praying to any God listening that the mill keep in once piece. I looked at their worn faces, tired from sleep deprivation, sunken from hunger, red from the sun and radiation exposure, and hoped that all the work we’d put into this mill was not about to be torn to pieces in the wind. One last gust shook around us before a sudden calm blew through the building, the rain falling vertically again and the tree branches outside stilling. I stood up first, uncomfortable by the sudden change in atmosphere, and walked to the door. I felt a hand on my shoulder stopping me at the threshold, and I looked in awe at the outside world. The water was still pouring down the river at amazing speeds, but the branches lying all around us were still, the leaves scattered about the grass sitting gently atop the greenery, unmoving. Trees were downed, and the break tents we’d built to take shelter from the sun were wrapped around each other in a tangled mess of canvas and wood all around the valley. 

A few people peeked from behind our heads, muttering in awe amongst themselves. “What just happened?” I heard Monty ask quietly, and when I turned to look at him, his face was grave. I knew he wasn’t asking about the storm, but I just lightly shook my head in warning. There was no reason to stir up more panic among the citizens, no matter how warped my mind was around the event that had taken place. 

I turned back towards the group of people, “Okay, everyone., let’s get back to camp before the winds start up again. We only have at most an hour before the storm returns, and that’s  _ if _ we’re lucky.” Murphy scoffed. “How could you possibly predict that?” He challenged, the words dripping with contradiction. 

“We’re in the eye of a hurricane, from what I can tell.” I countered. He looked unconvinced, but I didn’t have to tell anyone else twice before they were out the door and running back toward camp.

I started out the door before Bellamy yanked me by the arm back inside. 

“What were you thinking?” He chastised, anger raging behind his eyes. The look made me want to shrink down, but I stood taller instead, matching his stance.   

“I was looking for you,” I said, knowing a fight was imminent at this point.

Bellamy's grip on my arm tightened, “You should have stayed at camp where it was safe. That’s why I left you there. We can’t just have the Commander running around in the middle of a storm. You’re supposed to stay safe, and let your citizens do the dangerous work. At least,” he fumed, “that’s what a good leader would do.” The accusation in his tone stung, but not as badly as the disappointment I felt. Bellamy had been the one person that had been behind every decision I’d made since becoming Heda one hundred percent. Until now. I understood his anger - this had been the longest span of peace between Skaikru and the Grounders since we’d fallen to earth all those years ago, and my death would mean a certain end to the peace, but how was he supposed to expect me to sit back and watch while my people were risking their lives to save a building in the middle of a storm? Not that I’d even helped, I realized with a pang of guilt. I’d sat and watched as the others did the work for me, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. 

I didn’t get the chance to see if he knew how his words affected me, because he took off out the door without another word. I followed several meters behind, shivering now at the icy chill emanating through my entire body. 

We didn’t exchange words as Bellamy threw open his tent door and stormed inside. I continued further, calling out Madi’s name when I reached her tent. I heard shuffling behind me, and my mother’s head popped out of her tent. “She’s in here, Clarke. Come in,” she gestured, and I hesitated, knowing Bellamy and I hadn’t finished our conversation. I decided I would rather push it further out anyway, possibly until the winds were howling again and he wasn’t able to yell over them anymore.  

I climbed through the door to see Kane sitting on a cushion with an open book draped across his knee, and Madi sitting on my mother's bed covered in blankets, sleeping soundly as if we weren’t in the worst storm I'd ever encountered.  _ She must be used to it, _ I thought, wondering what effect the cataclysm had on the tides and how often storms of this magnitude occurred around here. This was the first true hurricane I'd been through in my seven years in Earth, and I couldn't imagine Madi having gone through many more in her short years. 

My mother sat at Madi's sleeping feet, and I knelt down next to her head, stroking her hair lightly. She stirred at this, and looked up through the blankets at me. 

I smiled, “You could sleep through another nuclear war, couldn't you?” She nodded silently in response, and sat up slowly. 

“We were looking for you earlier. Where did you go?” She asked, groggily. 

“I went to help everyone save the mill,” I replied, and my mother gave me a stern look, obviously not having known where I'd been. 

“You were out in that storm?” She asked with motherly disapproval. I nodded, not seeing a reason to explain myself. 

“I have to go talk to Bellamy, but I just wanted to check on you. Sorry I woke you up. Did you want to stay in my tent tonight?” I asked, knowing the small tent was not big enough for the three of them. 

“I'm comfy, though,” she argued, laying back down and pulling the covers over her head. I looked at my mom and she shrugged. 

“She's welcome to stay here tonight.” I nodded and thanked them, telling them to stay safe and not to leave the tent. 

“The storm will be starting up again soon.” 

I could feel the winds picking up already, and I contemplated going and getting a bottle of water before returning to the tent, but I thought better of it as the tree branches across the valley started to sway roughly in the wind. 

I ducked under the doorway, peeling the soaking wet clothes off my torso and hanging them across the clothes line above Bellamy's dresser. I pulled a dry shirt over my head and repeated with my pants before crawling into the bed next to a still fuming Bellamy. 

Ignoring his demeanor, I sidled up next to him, draping my arm over his bare chest and pulling the sheet up tightly to us. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees since the previous night, and although the cool chill in the air was welcome to my singed body, we were vastly underprepared for such a cold night. I shivered, wishing I'd grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the dresser. 

Bellamy scowled at the ceiling, wordlessly, but he still grabbed my hand under the blanket and wove our fingers together. I wondered if maybe he didn’t even realize he’d done it, when he turned toward me and brought his lips to mine. The kiss was hard and fast, and I could feel the anger radiating from him in it. He pulled back to return to his moping, and I heard the rain pick up on the roof, the sound amplified on the plastic tarp bouncing across the walls and reverberating through the tent. 

I swallowed my ego for once, taking a deep breath before speaking. “I’m sorry I worried you,” I paused, waiting for him to acknowledge my words. He didn’t, so I continued, “I understand your hesitance to have me out in that storm, but I’m still the commander here and if I start letting everyone do the hard work for me, I will lose the respect of not only our people, but the Grounders and the Eligiants. It’s not like the Ark down here. The system is so different, there’s no way to keep everyone happy while keeping me safe.”

“You think I don’t know that?” He asked angrily, then he sighed, squeezing my shoulder and resting his chin on my head. “That’s why we have the succession line in place. For when you die. Don’t think  _ that _ makes me feel any better about this.” 

I grinned up at him, “It’s nice to know you don’t want me to die,” I said, patting his chest. He rolled his eyes. 

“It’s not that I  _ care, _ I just don’t feel like fighting with the grounders anymore. You’re just a means to an end, you know?” His words were playful, the anger finally having faded from his face and left a sly grin in its place.  

I smiled back, suddenly uncomfortable with the proximity of our half naked bodies under the sheet together. This was a whole new aspect to our relationship - the kissing, the bare skin, the interlocked fingers. We were facing what we’d kept quiet for almost a year now, the feelings that had been compressed down deep, until they were only a memory. Keeping the peace between the remaining people of the human race had been on the forefront of our minds this whole time, and now that it seemed to be holding steady, we were forced to deal with everything we’d been desperately ignoring. 

“Bellamy, I-” He interrupted me suddenly, raising up onto his elbow to look at me.

“What you said before - about the white light? The other room? What were you talking about?”

I swallowed, the memory washing away from my mind at an alarming rate. I saw Monty, grasping my hand, standing in a white room. Then it vanished. 

“I don’t… I don’t know. It’s like I can’t remember it anymore. Like a memory from years ago but… it was just a few hours ago.” My eyes were unfocused, staring at the ceiling behind Bellamy’s head, trying to recall the fading images. 

“It was when I grabbed Monty’s hand, at the mill? Suddenly we were in a white space, not really a room but… more like a vast nothingness. It was tepid, and painless, and so quiet. It’s like the world just vanished.” A buzz in my mind vibrated, and suddenly the memory was gone. Blank. Like a story I’d heard from someone a long time ago. I blinked, staring at Bellamy’s face unfocused. “It’s like it never happened, though.”

“What do you mean?” He asked, furrowing his brow. 

“Like now. Just now,” I said, my voice increasing in volume as the wind picked up. “I- I forgot what I was saying. What did you ask?” His face was concerned, looking at me like I was having a mental breakdown.

“Are you having a stroke? What’s going on?” He asked, before the rain started blowing so hard the top of the tent started caving in, flapping in and out loudly. We both sat up quickly, staring at the roof and waiting for it to collapse in on us. After a few minutes the storm seemed to reach a peak, and even though the tent was a quarter of the way collapsed, it looked like it was going to hold steady like that.

“Do you think they’re going to hold up?” I asked warily. He shook his head, not knowing how to answer. 

“We don’t have many other options.” He said, pulling a thick blanket up from between the mattress and the tent wall and draping it over us. 

The storm raged loudly, and despite it’s treacherous roar we managed to both fall asleep under the covers, holding tightly to each other in the chilled air. 

It was late afternoon the next day when the winds finally died down enough to exit the tent. I rushed to Madi’s tent first, finding everyone inside no worse for wear than the previous night. The scene about the camp was one from a horror film, like the ones the twenty-first century Americans had watched to be thrilled in their dull, fearless lives. The tents had managed to stay mostly intact, their walls still sewn together at the edges, only having partially torn from each other. Some of the ones on the outside of the row had their sides ripped off, but the pvc pipes running along their sides and roofs were still standing, and the spikes holding them in the ground had only come out a couple of inches. The dining hall was another story entirely; the tables and chairs had taken flight from their positions on the ground and had joined the counter system that the kitchen staff served food at, the wood planks holding the roof on the building had pulled out of their nails and fallen behind, sticking out of the ground at skewed angles. The roof took the brunt of the damage, collapsing along the east side entirely and sitting on top of the counters and tables as if an afterthought of the storm’s damages. 

“Well,” Bellamy said, crossing his arms and surveying the damages with me, “Good thing it collapsed, really.” He pointed to the roof, and then moved his finger over to our tents behind it. “Looks like the dining hall was the only thing shielding the tents from the wind. Had it been coming from the other direction, or the building not collapsed, the wind probably would have torn our tents to shreds.” 

I turned as I heard people coming out of their tents to join us. I saw Raven approaching and my stomach turned, forcing myself to look away as she approached Bellamy and said something quietly to him, and he responded with a chuckle, throwing a smirk her way. I turned on my heel and headed toward the building housing the kitchen to inspect the damage there. I heard Bellamy call my name, but didn’t turn back. I couldn’t handle them right now - I had more important things to do than be jealous. 

Raven and I had had a very strained relationship since they had returned to Earth last year after I found out that they had found comfort in each other in the years on what was left of the Ark. I understood why, and was glad to have found out that they hadn’t lived in solitude in the years apart as I had until finding Madi, but I still got a sour taste in my mouth every time she came around. It was especially irking since she spoke only to Bellamy when she had anything to say, and avoided all interaction with me entirely. Before they had even returned to Earth, Bellamy made it explicitly clear that their relationship was over, and Raven hadn’t taken it well. I was surprised, actually, when he threw away an almost seven year relationship when we hadn’t been remotely romantic before they’d left on the rocket to escape  _ Primfiya _ , the nuclear blasts that brought about the second end to our fragile world. He’d explained to me that, while there was a physical aspect to their relationship, that’s all it had ever been. From the beginning, they’d both agreed that when they left space to fall to Earth again, they would end it. It seemed, however, that after all the time passed, Raven was not still in that same mindset that they’d been seven years prior. Bellamy had been, however, and he’d told me once that he had actually ended it after our first radio contact almost six months before they returned. 

I had not assumed that I’d had anything to do with it, and instead it was to focus his energy getting back to Earth, but the night he returned had spun my opinion on its heels. 

That day had been one of the hardest days of my life. They had managed to copy Thelonius’ method to use an unarmed missile to launch them back into the atmosphere, and had used the shell of the rocket they’d brought there to provide shelter from the frozen wasteland of space. I’d watched in horror as their ship had begun dissolving once it hit the atmosphere, and hurdled my friends in a burning mass down into the lake next to Arkadia’s rubble. Their trajectory was spot on, and I raced out to the lake, wading through the water towards the smoltering metal wreckage as it spewed liquid from it’s insides and caught fire. Too hot to touch, I waited for an agonizing hour as the flames died down before I could tear through the jagged walls and into the belly of the rocket. Amazingly, Raven had used the shell of the missile as an interior chamber and they’d been shielded from the brunt of the landing and flames. I assisted them onto the shore, our reunion a tearful and heavy one. Because of the crash, Harper - who had been three months pregnant at the time - went into early-term labor and miscarried there on the shore, in the dim light of the moon and the remaining flames. Bellamy held me on the shore, sitting next to me with his arms wrapped around my waist, my head resting in the crook of his neck, listening to Monty’s soft words and Harper’s mournful wails. Nobody had known she was pregnant, and she hadn’t wanted her situation to put a halt on their return, so she’d kept silent, hoping to surprise them with the news once they’d made it safely. Instead, they spent their first night back on Earth in sorrow. 

In the morning, we summed up as much energy as we’d had left and started our journey back to the ruins of Polis to begin the excavation of Earth’s remaining population. It took a week before we were able to make it to the door, and another week to get it open. On the third day, after our spirits were worn and our bodies aching, Bellamy joined me in my tent for the first time. It hadn’t even been conscious, really, when we’d come together that night. The need had been so strong we couldn’t physically stay apart, years of pent up frustration and longing spilled out on the floor of that tent, and in the morning he hadn’t even kissed me goodbye. It was so strange, almost an out of body experience - like neither of us had really been there that night, but instead only worn shells of ourselves with a craving that had to be satiated, and once it had been we knew that we had a goal at hand, and it was more important than anything else. We had reached that goal a week and a half later, and after that day so many things kept building and building onto of each other that we’d forgotten the night altogether. The reintegration of the Grounders into society had been the hardest part, and once the population of the Eligiate Prisoner Ship came into play, we had met our match. Raven and Bellamy’s relationship hadn’t even been mentioned until the morning she saw us leave his tent together a few weeks later. 

I’d faced Raven’s wrath before, when she’d found out I had slept with Finn all those years ago, but that had been eighteen year old Raven, a brilliant young woman with a one-track mind and unstable teenage emotions. This Raven was different, calm, calculated. She had looked at us for a long moment, and I could see the cogs turning in her mechanical mind, and then she’d stormed off. Bellamy explained to me then what they’d had on the Ark, and how they had mutually agreed to end it. I had understood, even as shocked as I’d been, why they’d decided to have a relationship without love. Seven years was a long time to live alone, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It was after that day, though, that she started to become cold to me, and it had reached a point where now I was unable to interact with her at all without her turning heel and escaping my presence. I decided not to push it, and to let her play out her emotions however she needed to in order to cope. 

After more people had come out of their tents, I instructed some to get to work sorting through the piles of tossed about kitchenware in the main room, asking to focus on the remaining food stores and try to salvage what was possible. A few of the Grounder men and I went to work on reinforcing the outside of the building where it needed, and I sent a group of Arkadians to the mill to check on its status. I was tearing through the wreckage blocking the entrance, thrown plates and trays piled on top of each other in a muddy blockade, when I heard my name. 

“Clarke,” came from behind me, and I turned. It was Monty, worn and tired but no worse for wear than when I’d last seen him. 

I frowned, “You okay, Monty?” I asked, the concern in my voice only partly disguised beneath the face I wore as  _ Heda _ . He shook his head, underneath his eyes dark like he hadn’t slept in days. I knew it was more than the hurricane. The look in his eyes was coming from deep in his soul, a tired I was feeling myself. 

“I can’t stop thinking about… what happened.” He replied, and I searched his face. 

“What do you mean?” I asked. My first thought was Harper, and the wrenching sadness they’d experienced months ago. He showed no answer there. 

“You know,” he said quietly, scanning the area for others who could be listening. “The white room. I don’t understand what that was - and I know I wasn’t the only one to see it. I mean, you saw it too, right?” He awaited my answer, but I didn’t have one for him. 

“What are you talking about?” I was growing concerned, the fear in his voice palpable, sending a chill down my spine. I couldn’t remember a white room we’d been in recently, and I wondered if the events of last night had worn him down to a breaking point. 

“Clarke,” he said sternly, “The white room. On the deck of the mill? You don’t remember?” His voice was getting louder, fear turning it sour. 

I hesitated, unsure how to respond. Everything I remember from that night was black, muddy, angry. Nothing remotely white came to mind, and I was going to reply when I was called over by a Grounder man working in the dining hall remains. 

I gave a sheepish smile, “Sorry Monty, We’ll talk later, okay?” He stared at me another moment before turning around and storming off. 

The conversation left me with an eerie feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I had to push it down while we still had so much work to do before the camp was livable again, especially since I wasn’t entirely sure that the storm had reached its conclusion yet.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: none.

We'd gotten a good few hours of cleaning in before the storm picked up again, rain pounding down on our chilled bodies and forcing us indoors.

I’d grabbed some of the dried meats from the cabinets still standing in the kitchen and rinsed the mud off of them, bringing them with me into my long unused tent and distributed them amongst us all while myself, Kane, my mother, Bellamy, and Madi all huddled together on the various milk crates and benches around the edge of my oversized tent. I took a nibble, stomach rumbling with hunger but my tongue was dry and my appetite poor. Bellamy offered me a sip of his canister that smelled sharply of whiskey, and I declined at first. Then, thinking of the long night ahead of us, took the canister and chugged a large gulp down, the liquid burning my esophagus all the way down and sitting heavily in my stomach. Bellamy took it back from me, mimicked my actions, and then offered it about. The others declined, and we continued the meal in silence.

The rain poured down on the tent with such force that it was hard to hear myself think. I was trying to wrap my mind around what Monty had been going on about earlier, the ‘white room’, but even that memory was starting to flicker and pause, retreating into the back of my mind like a memory you’d rather forget.

Madi finished her meal and laid her head in my lap, folding her hands on her belly and looking up at the tent’s roof. I leaned back against the large wood dresser behind me, reaching over towards Bellamy, where his hand met mine halfway, interlocking our fingers and resting our hands gently on the floor between us. Like a hawk, Madi’s attention left the flapping roof and caught on our joined hands. Loudly, and without hesitation, she cried, “What, so, are you guys together now?”

Kane and my mother looked up from their conversation and joined Madi in staring at our hands, the attention like a hot knife, causing me to drop his hand and pull it into myself.

I put my hand on Madi’s forehead, pulling her attention back to my face and away from Bellamy’s whom she was glaring at. “It’s rude to blurt things like that out, Madi.” She scoffed.

“Don’t try to draw the attention away from you guys. Answer my question,” she sat up, crossing her legs and sitting directly across from me.

I chewed inside my cheek, thinking about how I was going to answer her that satisfied her question while simultaneously evading it.

“Yeah, Madi,” Bellamy replied suddenly, startling me and drawing everyones attention. “Your mom and I are together now. Romantically.” He knelt forward, outstretching his arm towards her. “If that’s okay with you?” I waited anxiously for a reply as she stared at him. I had wished this would go another way, with her emotions being all over lately and her answer to him a wildcard. She looked to me, and I kept a level face. I would let her decide for herself if Bellamy was going to be accepted into our little family or not, preteen emotions notwithstanding.

I grinned widely when she threw her arm out toward his, grasping his wrist and shaking firmly.

I met my mother’s eyes and couldn’t read her face. She had been there through it all with Bellamy, even during the times I hadn’t. She’d been there when we’d pulled the lever on Mount Weather, killing all the innocent people inside, she’d been there when I was in Polis and he’d gone on a killing spree with Pike, murdering Indra’s entire Grounder army that had been sent to help us, and she’d been there when he’d gotten himself on the dropship all those years ago. She’d been the one to put Thelonius Jaha back together afterwards, almost getting herself killed in the process. If anyone was going to have a problem with Bellamy and I, it was my mother. I would just have to remind her that I also pulled the lever on Mount Weather, I let them drop the missile on the Grounder village, I’d become _Wanheda_ the feared killer. We had all done things to survive, and now we were here trying to make up for those sins, tilling the earth, rebuilding the world piece by piece.

Kane reached an outstretched arm and shook Bellamy’s too, giving him a short speech on finding happiness in a world like ours. I sat in silence as the three conversed about things I had no intention of voicing my opinion on, such as ceremonies and future children. I shuddered at the prospect of bringing a child into a world such as this, and a thought gripped me suddenly. What if that was expected of me? The fearless _Wanheda,_ killer of enemies, commander of the Earth’s people. Pregnant?

Unacceptable.

The thought had crossed my mind bitterly before, sometime during my months in solitude when my thoughts had stumbled into the areas of ‘what could have been’ while I trudged along the barren wasteland gasping for clean air and searching desperately for non-irradiated water. Now I had all I could ever want or need, and I hoped that all that was here would be enough for Bellamy, too.

Once the rain died down, Madi, my mother, and Kane retreated back to their own tents, leaving Bellamy and I alone listening to the weather crash down on the tent roof before letting up, leaving us in humid silence, before starting again and repeating.

I crawled into my bed around midnight, and Bellamy sat next to a lantern reading one of the books we’d salvaged from Mount Weather. It was miraculous in itself that it had survived all these years, but was also unbelievable that the text was nearly pristine, little to no water damage and all pages intact. I had read it a few weeks ago before passing it on to Bellamy, and this was the first night that we hadn’t been so exhausted and overworked that he’d had time to actually start it.

I tried not to stare at his shirtless physique, but it became impossible once I realized he wasn’t paying enough attention to me to notice. The gravity on the Ark had been artificial, and the first thing we’d noticed when we crash landed in the dropship was that it had been lacking. When he’d come down the second time a year ago he had lost a lot of the muscle tone he’d gotten in his time on Earth; lean and wiry, but still strong. Now, after a year of heavy lifting and hard labor with real protein from animal meats he was a completely different man, harder, the muscles on his arms tight against his skin and his abdomen creasing where the muscles separated from one another. He rested one arm on the table and the other on his knee, bouncing up and down as he read a particularly exciting section. I smiled, pulling the covers up under my arm. That caught his attention, and he turned to look at me, a small indent in his cheek where his smile lines creased as he smiled softly at me. I tried to return the gesture, but my body was frozen there, still mesmerized by his masculine beauty bathed in lamplight, the gold flecking against his face and body and shining dimly onto the wall.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning the corner of his page down and closing his book. I was unsure how to answer, the events of the last few days flooding my mind and splashing the memories around like a film-festival failure, the shaking camera causing me nausea and the grainy texture a result of bad direction.

I opted not to answer, which elicited the response I’d hoped for when he crawled into bed next to me and pulled me back into him, the heat of his body welcome in the cold air.

And then it happened again.

Suddenly, I was standing. At first I thought it was a strange dream, until the vertigo hit me when the gravitational pull shifted from my side to underneath my feet. I’d never experienced such a strong physical presence in a dream before, and it was taking me longer than I’d like to comprehend the situation around me. I felt suddenly heavier, the sweat on my previously clean body sticking to my clothes and gluing them to my skin in random places up and down my legs. The worst part was the air; a hot, humid, density filled the air around my face and neck, giving me the distinct feeling of drowning despite the lack of water. The room was white like before, blindingly, but my vision was obscured by large plastic lining the area around my body. I leaned forward, looking around the wall into the rest of the room and was suddenly filled with dread. All along the wall were containers like my own, filled with teenagers and older children dressed in white full-body suits topped with sealed helmets similar to the ones Bellamy, Raven and the others had brought back and forth from the Ark last time. I stepped forward to get a better look, but was stopped by an invisible barrier. I pushed the glass with my gloved hand and stepped into the room, spinning around and I surveyed the sleeping kids. I gasped as I landed on a familiar face.

Jasper Jordan himself stood in a pod directly next to mine, his long hair in wisps over his brow, the peaceful look on his face sending a stinging sensation into my eyes. I walked to his pod, laying a hand on it lightly. I never thought I’d see his face again, and I thought back to the last time I’d seen him. We had annihilated Alie, and were facing the end of the world again shortly before _Primfiya_ had reached us. We were looking for a solution to keep the human race alive, and Jasper had given up when we hadn’t been able to find one. He was heartbroken when his girlfriend, Maya, had been killed by Bellamy and I in Mount Weather, and had taken his life instead of joining the rest of the colony and Grounders in the bunker underneath Polis.

I wondered, suddenly, if I hadn’t gotten it all wrong. Had something happened I was not aware of? The technology was there, left over by Beckah and Alie, ready to save the human race from oblivion by inserting us into an artificial world called the City of Light. Had they actually succeeded? I was given two options when the time had come - stop Alie, and live through Primfiya, or let Alie chip everyone on earth and bring us into an alternate reality where there was no pain and nobody ever died. When presented the options, had I made a different choice? Perhaps the last year hadn’t been successful because of my doing, but instead had been the fictional thoughts in an artificial land that Alie had created for me to fit into my ‘perfect reality’. In that case, had she somehow managed to preserve our bodies, fitting us with suits to save us from the radiation while our minds lived in a vast expanse of imagination that kept us from knowing our grim reality?

I jumped, a cold chill filling my body as an alarm started blaring in the distance. Instinctually, I ran, heading toward the back of the building where I could see a set of doors with no handles. I smacked into them, feeling all around for something to grip, turning to look for another door when I stopped dead in my tracks. A chill ran through my body and my stomach turned when my eyes fell on a familiar face. Bellamy laid upright in the end pod directly next to me, a peaceful look on his face underneath the glass of the air tight suit. I looked hard at him, a chilling realization that he was not the same man I’d laid down with a few moments ago. He was softer, younger. A twenty two year old Bellamy, exactly the same as he’d looked all those years ago when we met on the drop ship, preserved in a chamber as if to be viewed in a museum.

I heard noises from behind the door, and I quickly sprinted back to my pod, leaning back into it and pulling the glass gently back in front of me. I heard the doors open, and my eyes were almost closed when I caught his eyes. Jasper was looking at me through four panes of glass, darkness creeping behind his eyes and tinging his blank features. I reached out and touched the pane in front of me, hoping he’d respond similarly to let me know he was here with me, too, in this sterile chamber of children. He kept eye contact for a moment before sweeping his eyes over to something happening beside me. I dared to lean into the glass, looking through the curve of the pane, barely able to see past the other pods to where they were standing in a circle by the doors speaking quietly.

They were inspecting something, and I strained my neck trying to see. My heart lurched when I realized what it was, and I heard a sudden chorus of clicks all around me. They had released a lever on the far wall, and the act had caused all the pods to open suddenly. The pod closest to them I realized was Bellamy’s, and they pulled open his glass door. Pushing my door open before I realized I’d done it, I fell out into the hallway between all the pods and stumbled a few steps before righting myself. Two of the hazmat suits turned toward me and pointed, rushing over to me while two others pulled Bellamy out of his pod. In the middle of the chaos, I noticed a few others moving around in their pods, the alarms flashing red over their faces and casting a sickening glow that shined off their eyes and masks. I felt the hands of terror grip my insides as I watched them pulling Bellamy out of his pod and grab his mask and pull straight up, exposing his head to the poison air just as the two tackled me onto the floor. I flailed, kicking and screaming with all my strength, determined to get to Bellamy before the suits gave him an ending like we’d given those in Mount Weather when the radiation poisoned their air and swiftly ended their lives.

I screamed to him, and he whipped his head around to me.

“Clarke!” he yelled back, and tried to run toward me, but the suits held him in place. He thrashed against them as I struggled to get out of their hold on my arms and their knees in my back, but it was no use. I knew my body must be weak with misuse, unsure of how long I’d actually been out of the real world and inside of this pod, my muscles slendering with atrophy and my nerves and vessels weak with sedentation. I vaguely heard them saying my name as I struggled against them, trying desperately to see if Bellamy had succumbed to the radiation yet, when they grabbed my mask and twisted it a quarter turn before pulling it straight off my head. I screamed, waiting for the burns to tear through my flesh, scorching my lungs and melting what was left of my body. The room was starting to go dark, and I felt my breathing move faster and faster until all control of it was involuntary and my body finally gave up and blacked out, but not before catching the final glimpse of Bellamy being tackled to the ground by the suits, struggling against them and yelling incoherently as they pushed their knees into his back and pulled out a large syringe filled with opaque fluid and injected it into the strained muscles of his neck.


End file.
